Episode 33 of Hooked on Creek features my interview with Scott Murawski from Max Creek.
In this episode, Scott talks about performing, recording and writing music with Max Creek and the dedicated fans that support the band. Scott also talks about his guitars, his recording gear, playing with Bill Kreutzmann and the meaning behind his song Leaves, among many other things.
This episode also features a segment of the song Leaves performed live by Max Creek on November 21, 2008.
Transcript of episode 33
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 33.
Thank you for tuning into this special episode of Hooked on Creek featuring an extended conversation with Scott Murawski. Scott has been playing guitar and singing in Max Creek since 1972 and in this episode, Scott talks extensively about performing, recording and writing music with Max Creek and the dedicated fans that support the band. Scott and I also talk about his guitars, recording gear, playing with Bill Kreutzmann and the meaning behind his song Leaves, among many other things. We cover a lot of ground in this episode, so sit back, relax and take it all in. This is a good one.
But first, I want to remind you that you can get more information about this episode and read an entire transcript of my interview with Scott Murawski on the Hooked on Creek website. Just go to hookedoncreek.com. And while you are there, click the contact link and let me know what you think. Alright, we have a lot to cover, so let’s get started.
Korre: Scott Murawski, welcome to Hooked on Creek.
Scott: Hey Korre. Thanks for having me. Good to be here.
Korre: First. I just want to thank you and the band for everything you did at Camp Creek. It was such an incredible weekend. Everything was perfect and it was amazing for me to be part of that experience with all the other Creek Freaks celebrating Max Creek. So thank you so much for putting on that weekend. It was amazing.
Scott: Oh, thanks for coming to it.
Korre: Scott, did you have a lot of fun at Camp Creek?
Scott: A lot of fun. It was like a little subdued because of the COVID thing. And I was concerned about how much I wanted to expose myself to lots of people in close proximity, that kind of thing. Besides that, it was certainly a blast. The music was a blast and yeah — it’s very, very cool.
Korre: Well, I wasn’t there on Thursday night, but the weather for Friday, Saturday and Sunday was just perfect. It was just beautiful to be there. So thanks.
Scott: Thursday was interesting.
Korre: I heard it rained.
Scott: It rained. It did. The roof of the stage is pretty high and they had set up like pop-up tents underneath the roof of the stage for us to be under as a double, extra layer of protection from the wetness or whatever. And so it changed how the stage sounds and everything, because everything’s very close now. It was really cool, actually. And, we pulled out a bunch of nuggets. We dug deep. We played stuff that we haven’t played in a hundred years without any rehearsal whatsoever. And I’m actually rather impressed at how much stuff we can pull out that we hadn’t done in a long time and that actually worked and didn’t train wreck.
Korre: I’m curious when you are about to go on stage and perform in Max Creek, what types of thoughts are typically going through your head as you walk up on stage and you look out at that crowd? What are you thinking?
Scott: I’m thinking — I don’t know what I’m thinking. There is various stages of things that I think before I go on. I actually have for other projects that are more nerve wracking, I actually have like a hit list of stuff, things that I have to think in order to influence my playing in a way that I like. Like just ways to give myself hints as to the kind of attitude that I want to have in order to project what I want to project kind of a thing, you know. The difference is with Creek, it’s like, I’ve been doing it for almost 50 years, it’s only 49 for me. But it’s so relaxed and so natural.
And so most of what I’m thinking when going on stage with Creek is how can I make what we’ve been doing all these years interesting somehow. You know what I mean? I’m thinking, what tunes do I want to do? We don’t do a set list because I like to feel it out by the moment, like what feels right, right now. So I think about things like that. Like how can I fuck this up in some way? What kind of things I can do to make it so that this song that I’ve played thousands of times for a hundred years, how can I make it so that it’s interesting?
Korre: And so then as the show goes on, talk about that relationship that you have, or the band has, with the crowd. I mean, are you being influenced by the crowd? Are you seeing things in the crowd or tracking people in the crowd as the show goes on.
Scott: I’m feeling the energy of the crowd. I mean, it’s a two-way street. Like everything gets amplified every time it goes around. You know what I mean? So we put out something and the crowd reacts to that, and then we react to that, and they react to that. It’s like an endless kind of cycle of feeding energy.
Korre: Sometimes when I listened to Max Creek shows, I’m hearing the crowd throw out requests and sometimes you guys will ask the audience, “What do you want to hear next?” I’m curious, Are there songs that you wish the audience would request that they never do?
Scott: No. There’s songs that they request that I wish they never did. But no — that’s not even true either. It’s funny because when we say that, “Hey, what do you want to hear?” It just turns into a cacophony of sound. Like everybody is saying different things. And so I find myself reading lips, do I know what song that person’s saying or whatever? What was the first part of that question?
Korre: Like for me, I would imagine I would maybe lock eyes with somebody in the crowd and then just maybe look at them or kind of track them as the show goes on. Because there’s a lot of interesting people in the crowd and maybe that’s fun to do, too.
Scott: The crowd is definitely interesting. Like I can tell when there’s a guitar player watching me. And so I like fucking with their head a little bit, you know what I mean? If I feel like they’re watching me and they know what’s going on, I’ll like switch things up, change things up. I used to have a delay rack. And so I don’t anymore, at least not controllable like that where it would look like I played a note and then you hear, the note come out. And so I would do that to people that watch me play. But there’s that, and then there’s another aspect of you look out there and you see somebody who is not reacting. You see somebody who’s just kind of with their head cocked to one side and they’re just like evaluating. And it’s like, OK. I’m going to win this person. I going to win this person over. You know, there’s that goes on. Yeah, it’s cool. It’s fun.
Korre: Well, one of the most incredible things I’ve picked up from listening to you play in Max Creek is just how easy it seems to be for you to play different styles or genres of music and play them so well. Maybe that’s what makes you such a great jam band. But I’m wondering, is that music versatility something that you’ve worked on over the years or has it come naturally to you?
Scott: That’s a good question. When I joined Max Creek, I was not listening to country. I was not listening to bluegrass. I was not listening to the Dead. I was listening to classic rock at the time. I was listening to Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and the Beatles and Steppenwolf, whatever — that’s kind of where I was. When I joined them, they were a three-piece country rock band. And they were doing like Crosby, Stills & Nash, and they were doing some Woody Guthrie and they were doing like traditional stuff and country rock stuff and bluegrass. Playing with them was kind of my first foray into all that stuff.
The first time I went to the Max Creek house and jammed, it was just me and the guitar player and the drummer — and the drummer also played harp. And so they started playing some bluegrass stuff and I started doing all these blues licks over the top of it. They were like, “No, no. You got to play major pentatonic. Not minor pentatonic.” I’m like, “Oh, OK.” So, I kind of had to learn bluegrass in order to play with them, kind of a thing. So being versed in that, and then as a musician, you’re always trying to broaden your horizons and especially in a band that jams, you have to pay attention to jazz because there’s a lot of jazz influence in the whole jamming thing. And that is kind of like broadening your ears and broadening your mind as far as how all the theory goes and playing in that style. And so you can hear a lot more things.
So I don’t know. I just play all the kinds of music that I like, I guess. And I try to stay somewhat current. In the band, I’ve always been the guy that pushes the different ideas. Like when I brought songs like Pissed Off in. It was like, I wrote the song as like a joke. Like, OK. I’m going to write a punk rock song and it’s going to be a joke. And I wrote the song and then they heard it, and they were like, “Oh, we got to do this.” And so, it’s always been somewhat of a thing where I want to push the boundaries anyway. And so, I always try to stay current. I listen to some pop just to stay current there, like the current songs. Plus, I have a recording studio down here. And so, I try to stay current with technology and listened to various productions and learn that aspect of the thing. And my wife has very different musical tastes than I do. She has three daughters that worked in record stores at different times in their lives. And so, they all have very broad musical tastes and they turned me on to things that I normally would stumble onto.
Korre: Well for me, Max creeks, ability to improvise and continually reinvent songs through deep, spacey and beautiful jams is what keeps me coming back for more. So I’m curious …
Scott: Me too.
Korre: So I’m curious, what does it feel like to be in the flow of a jam, to be in that zone when everything is clicking and the music is building and evolving on itself? What does that feel like?
Scott: When it’s working, it’s kind of like an out-of-body experience. When it’s working the way it’s supposed to work, it’s going straight from like intuitive feeling right to the fingers, without any intellectual thought behind it. You know what I mean? It’s like it bypasses that and I can almost be a spectator and enjoy it — the fact that it’s just happening without me thinking about it. Those moments are rare, but not as rare as you would think. But that’s kind of the goal of it all is to get to that place where you’re not thinking about it. And you’re like flowing along — your body is flowing along with it, and you can just watch the whole thing go down, if that make sense.
Korre: In my interview with Bob Gosselin, he talked about a time when he went to a Grateful Dead show at Dillon Stadium with other members of the band. And he said he had a very profound experience, on a couple levels, and it sounded like attending that Dead show might have been a pretty influential moment for the band. So I’m curious, what do you think? Well, first of all, do you remember that and do you think going to see Grateful Dead early on in the band’s career was an influential turning point for the band and jamming?
Scott: So I think the members of the band went to Watkins Glen and that was their first experience with the Dead. And I remember that being a profound experience for them. I was too young to go at the time. I was 15 at the time. But I remember them coming back and playing a lot of Grateful Dead records after that. What was interesting was a lot of the traditional tunes that they were doing, Woody Guthrie stuff, we were doing in our own flavor. And then we heard them do it and it’s like, oh, that’s kind of cool the way they do it. And so, yeah. It was a profound influence, I would say on most of us, I would phrase it that way. Well, on all of us. I would say on all of us. And so my first Dead experience came after that — the year after that — and that was a profound experience for me. It was also my first mushroom experience, which aided things. Aided to the profoundness of it.
Korre: So what year is this?
Scott: ’74.
Korre: 1974. It’s a good year.
Scott: It is a good year. They were single drummer at that point. So the jams were very free and they were very long. It’s like my favorite year of Dead. And so, yeah. That was a major influence. We started covering a lot of dead songs, but there’s only one guitar player in Max Creek and so it has to be interpretive when you play a Dead song because you can’t possibly cover all the parts that are there, because there’s two guitar players. And I think we kind of did our own thing with them anyway and gave the Dead stuff our own energy when we were covering it. And so, there used to be a lot more Dead in the repertoire. But then at the same time, we all started writing more. And so, there were more originals coming into the repertoire as well.
To make a long story short, we kind of like stopped doing the Dead material and focused on the originals. At a certain point, it was like, OK, we need to push us out there. We still cover the Dead in our own unique way, I think. But they were definitely influential. They were influential as to like not trying to mimic style, but more to the freedom of what they were doing. And, you know, listening to how they jammed taught me how to listen to music when I play. Yes, they were a great influence. A great influence.
Korre: So as a fan of the Grateful Dead, it must have been special to play with Bill Kreutzmann. And I’m wondering, how did the two of you first meet and what led you guys to start playing together?
Scott: We first met in Costa Rica. Mike Gordon from Phish had gone out to Hawaii and did a gig with Kreutzmann and Steve Kimock in Hawaii. And while he was out there doing that, he was texting me and saying, “Oh man. This is so good. This is so good. We got to do this. We got to do this.” And so he arranged for us to play at a benefit for the schools in Costa Rica. And so it was put on in Jaco, which was like a beach, surf kind of town. And we put it on at this resort that had this big area in the middle of it all. It was like grass and palm trees and everything. And they set up a stage there. So it was really weird. It was really weird experience for me, having never met Kreutzmann before.
And actually, all three of us were supposed to meet at the airport and get picked up. It’s an hour-and-a-half drive to Jaco from the airport. And we got there and Mike’s plane was delayed. So it’s like me and Billy in the car. And I’m like, “Hi Bill. I’m Scott.” We had this ride for an hour and a half in the car together were I just got to shoot the shit with him And, I was so nervous. It was an out-of-body experience kind of thing. And it was very cool. Mike finally made it down and we started rehearsing the next day. And it just felt like — once I got over the nerves, part of it — it was super comfortable. And so that’s how that came to be. And then at the end of it, Bill really had a good time and went to Mike and said, “We should do this more.” And Mike was like, “I can’t do this more. I have other things I want to do.” And so Bill was like, “Well, do you mind if me and Scott do it more and find another bass player?” And Mike was like, “Oh yeah, that’s not a problem.” And he was like, “Can you recommend a bass player?” And Mike thought about it for a bunch of days and said, “Oteil.”
And that’s another guy that I’ve never really met and super admire. So it was weird to like be in a room rehearsing with the two of them for the first time and be like, “Oh man. This is unbelievable. I’m like dreaming right now.” And then we did a song. I don’t remember what we did — Eyes of the World, maybe. And then jammed for 45 minutes. And that was the first thing we did. And at the end of it, it was like, “Oh yeah. This works. This works.”
Korre: I’ve heard recordings of you performing a song called Pollyanna a couple of times, including with Bill Kreutzmann and also with Max Creek. Did you write that song or co-write it? I was trying to find the history of it. I couldn’t figure out where it came from. I like it, I just didn’t know where that came from.
Scott: In playing with BK3 with a Bill and Oteil, Bill went to Robert Hunter and asked him if he had any lyrics lying around and Robert Hunter sent us a dozen songs, lyrics. We got together and we wrote music for all of them. A limited number of them we played out. So Pollyanna, I wrote the music for that over Robert Hunter’s lyrics.
Korre: Well, that’s great. That must’ve been pretty special to have his lyrics in your music, right?
Scott: Yeah. It’s very cool. Definitely. It’s intimidating, a little bit.
Korre: When Max Creek formed in 1971, as I understand it, it was a year later in 1972, when you were just 15, that you got an invitation from Dave Reed to sit in with Max Creek. Tell me about what you remember of Dave Reed at that time and your relationship with him and anything about those very first experiences in this band.
Scott: Dave Reed became my trumpet teacher when I was in fifth grade, when I was like 11 years old. At that point, I’d known him for four or five years. He was great. As a trumpet teacher, there was a point where he said, “OK, we’re going to put down the horns and we’re not going to play trumpet for three months and I’m going to teach you. We’re going to talk about music theory. And that was like the best thing that ever could have happened to me, right then and there. Because I was still young, and this was before the whole Max Creek thing. This was when I was like 11 or 12 or whatever. Just teaching me the basic concepts of how music works was just the most amazing thing. So he and I have always, and still have, a good relationship. He’s a great guy and he’s very knowledgeable and he’s a very good musician. That was just a wonderful thing for me to have his influence at a young age.
And so, then he heard me play the guitar and he said, “Well, you should come.” He didn’t ask me to sit in. He asked me to go over and just jam with him and Bob, the drummer. And so, I did that. And then they talked it over and said, “Oh, you should come to a Max Creek rehearsal.” The Max Creek house was actually in the town that I grew up in. So this was all happening a couple of miles away from where I grew up. And so, the big day of the rehearsal came and I was going to meet the mysterious bass player, John Rider. And it’s like this whole thing. He pulls up in his thunderbird and he’s got the sunglasses and the headband and the long hair. And it’s like, this whole thing. So it was cool. So I was super intimidated, and then did the rehearsal. And they were like, “Yeah, OK. So why don’t you come out and play on a handful of songs. You can be like the prodigy kid guitar player.” And so that’s what I did.
I’ve had tape recorders since I was eight years old since my brother went into the service and he gave me his Pentron seven-inch reel-to-reel, this big mammoth tape recorder. So I’ve always recorded myself playing music or trying to record myself playing music. And so Dave Reed also gave me a two-track reel-to-reel that actually could record one track at a time. And I just went nuts with that. And that’s when I started like really getting into the recording. And then I got, you can see it back here, the four-channel reel-to-reel. And that’s what I wrote almost everything Creek on between 1976 and 1991. So Dave Reed was an influence in that respect by teaching me how to do minimal overdubbing on recording and everything and getting me going in that direction.
Korre: What did your parents or family think of you as a teenager pursuing this hobby and getting into a band? Did they approve of that?
Scott: They were always encouraging, even when my grades started to go downhill, because who the fuck wants to do high school when you’re in a rock band? But they always encouraged my music and were supportive of that. Because they had met Dave Reed when I was 11 years old and he was still in high school and everything. My parents had a rapport with him, too. So they trusted him and figured that if I was going with him, that it was wholesome and wonderful and nice. And, it was not. But it was cool. They were cool with it.
Korre: I’ll take a step back here and look at the big picture. Are you surprised Max Creek is still together after all this, does that ever surprise you?
Scott: Totally. Totally.
Korre: Were there times throughout the last 49 or 50 years where it might not have made it, but you did? And if so, what kept the band together through that?
Scott: There was a time when I quit the band, when I started having children. When I started having children, I was looking for more security. MTV is really big and happening. And I look at MTV and then I look at what we’re doing and I’m thinking, are we ever really going to be able to be anything that’s super successful with a lot of longevity or anything? And so I got the day job. Before I even got the day job, I told them, “I’m looking for work.” And there was one place that was hiring and it was hiring on weekends. And so I told them that if I got this job, that I was not going to be able to play. And so, I got the job. I didn’t get the job that I went for. I was going for this operations job where you basically take care of the computers at night, kind of a thing, and over the weekend. I was always dabbling in computers. And so on my resume, I put all the dabbling that I had done. And they said, “Well, why don’t you take the programmer’s test?” And so I took the programmer’s test and got a good enough score that they hired me as a programmer during the weekdays.
And so I had to go back to the band and say, “So, I’m not working weekends. I’m working weekdays. And if you guys wanted to do things on the weekends, I’d be willing to do that as long as they weren’t too crazy.” And so, yeah. That was a point when it was on the brink and it survived. And it actually became — I can only speak for myself. I don’t think this is true for the other members of the band. But at that point, like all through the 80s, our schedule was just grueling, just grueling. Like we were just always playing and we’re always driving. Everything is all on the east coast. And it’s just these endless weekends of driving. And to make payroll, we incorporated, and we had a payroll and it was like, “Oh, we got to play this empty shit hole on Tuesday night because we got to make payroll.” You know what I mean?
So, and it was just grueling and it became like playing music just to pay the bills kind of a thing. And so when that whole thing happened, when I got the job and it went to more of a part-time thing, that started to become my escape again. I looked forward to it. I get to go and escape out of my reality and do this thing. And so it made it better, I guess. It made it so that people weren’t living off of it. And therefore, it wasn’t a grind. It became something that was a creative outlet for us instead of the grind, I guess. I don’t know.
Korre: How do you account for what these Creek Freaks have become and who they are and how devoted they are to this band? How did that happen? Is that something that the band has been trying to manipulate and build over time or did it just happen on its own?
Scott: I don’t know that I can explain it. Way, way back in the day. Way back in the 70s, it was like a statement. John Rider made the statement that he wants Max Creek to be a place where people can come and not be afraid to be creative and not be afraid to be themselves. It’s been true for us. It’s been true for everybody that’s come along. The original fans, they’re all my age or older. So, it’s definitely something that’s been passed down. People come up and say, “Yeah, my parents used to come see you in the 80s. My grandparents used to come see you in the 70s.” It’s definitely a thing. I don’t know. It’s its own institution, I guess. It’s bigger than all of us. It’s not something that any band member or band collective as a group intended to happen any more than the intent of coming there to be creative and be ourselves.
Korre: I’m curious about the song Leaves. Can you tell me a little bit about the origins of that song or what inspired it? I think there’s just so much raw emotion there. I just need to know more about that song.
Scott: Well, what does it mean to you?
Korre: I’m asking you the question.
Scott: I would argue that whatever the song means to you currently is as valid, if not more valid, than what the song means to me. I would argue that. And, that’s something that I’ve always done when people ask me what songs are about. I say, “Well, what does it mean? You tell me what it means to you first, and then I’ll tell you what it means to me.” Because of that, because I think songs come from other places. They come from places — like I don’t know what they’re about. When I write, usually, I write a bunch of music and then I put on the headphones and I turn on a microphone and I just close my eyes, play the music, and sing whatever the fuck comes out. And whatever comes out, comes out.
And, there’s been times when, at the end of it all, I write it all down — everything that I sung. And I write it down and I look, and I go, “Holy shit.” This all makes sense. I didn’t know I had these feelings inside of me. But yeah, they are. So it comes from some other level of subconsciousness that I can’t explain, a lot of the times. So, that said — well, are you going to tell me what it means to you?
Korre: Yeah. So for me, I pick up on the metaphor of leaves and autumn and changing seasons and impermanence — nothing is going to stay the same, everything is going to change. And the life cycle of a tree or of leaves is interesting when you think about it grows, it sort of dies, falls off the tree. But in that death, it’s this beautiful color that ultimately brings you around it to really admire it. And the whole cycle starts over again. So that’s where my head goes. And it’s from that where I frame my thoughts about the song
Scott: That’s good. That might be better than mine. I’m a Libra. My birthday is in October. And so the fall always has this kind of significance for me, just because of that. And for me, it is a time when I become, not sentimental, but what’s the other one? Nostalgic, I guess. And so thinking about the words, the words are a little bit bitter, in a way. Like there’s all sorts of sarcasm dripping from the first verse. Like, “Take your time to call me. You can take your time. Cause I’m not waiting. That’s not the phone. My hand is not on the phone and I’m not waiting.”
It’s a way to say, “Yes, I’m waiting for you to call me.” You know what I mean? And then the chorus is just that whole autumn imagery, which you described already — all the colors and leaves falling and the sky is gray. And just sum up your existence and reflect. I don’t know. I have fucking idea what it’s about.
Korre: I love it. When you look back over the history of Max Creek and the different drummers you had in place, can you talk about the different strengths they had, from your perspective as the guitar player and singer?
Scott: Being a very rhythmic oriented player, and also being a closet drummer, I’ve always had a lot of communication with the drummer because they are so instrumental in shaping what we sound like and what my songs sounded like. So there’s always been a connection with every drummer. And every drummer has brought something to the table that’s been amazing and that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed and learned from. Bob would basically — I listened to the tapes from the late 70s and early 80s, listened to those recordings and he is just so good. He’s so solid during the songs. And when it cuts to the jam, he knows how to be solid and completely fluid at the same time. It’s just an amazing thing. It’s so expressive in what he does. I would say solidity and fluidity are his definite strengths.
And Greg DeGuglielmo, he’s super solid as well. I mean, all the drummers are very solid. There’s not one of them that’s not solid. Greg brings this kind of fire to the way he jams, the way he interacts. Like he definitely plays off of me, like it’s a back and forth. He’s an Aries. And so he’s got a lot of fire in him and it comes out in his playing in a very expressive and amazing way. He’s very good. And he’s a very deep feeling person and that comes through in his playing as well.
And then let’s see, who’s after that? Greg Vasso, he’s like solid as a rock. He came in and after a certain period of time, he wanted to be like a drum machine, like as far as being the backbone of the beat and he certainly was. But then at the same time, when it comes time for it to get outside the box and really express, he can definitely lay into that and definitely express as well, in a unique and humorous way. It’s interesting, he and I have a side project Depth Quartet, which unfortunately you missed out on this year. They played Friday night Camp Creek the last Camp Creek. And that band is very unique and experimental and fun. And a lot of the rehearsals would end up where me and Vasso would just be laughing hysterically over the way we just played something. You know what I mean? Like there’s humor in the music in a way. It’s just a really cool thing.
And then Scott Allshouse, he’s just graceful. Like he’s solid. He is the lightest player out of all the players. He doesn’t hit very hard. So when he’s playing. I turn him up in the monitor if he’s on stage. But he has like this grace to his playing and precision and a flare. I don’t know how to describe it. He’s got a lot of talent for being able to play a lot of stuff, I guess. I don’t know how to put it much better than that.
And then Carbone is as solid as a rock and also super expressive. And he brings kind of a modern sensibility to what we’re doing. And Carbone is awesome. I love playing with him and he’s super expressive and he’s fun to play off of and goofy. And we have an amazing time.
The thing about all these drummers, and any musician in the band, they bring more to it than what meets the eye. It’s more than their playing. It’s the attitudes that they bring and the interaction that they have and the expressiveness that they have — on and off stage. It’s just a very cool thing.
Korre: Do you have any reflections on Rob Fried and what he contributed?
Scott: Well, yeah. And then there’s Jay. Rob is such a creative, interesting guy and interesting player. He would bring so many things. There was just so many different sounds that were coming out back there. I would hear things and I turn around. And I remember one night in particular. I was hearing this sound, this rhythm coming out, and I turned around and looked, and he was hitting a coal shovel with a spoon. And that’s the level of creativity and thinking outside the box that he brought to the whole thing. And then when he left us, there was no percussion for a long time until Jay came along.
And Jay came along like attached to Bill. And it was like, “I’ve got this friend who plays percussion.” And it’s like, “Yeah, bring him along.” And at first, Jay was very subdued, very quiet — but super tasteful. I really liked everything he was doing. And as he progressed, he came out of his shell. So now when the peaks hit, he starts bashing things back there. Off stage, he’s very like, “Yeah, everything’s cool, man.” But then you look back in the middle and he’s thinking, he’s like, “Ahh.” He’s got this, whatever.
Korre: Right now it looks like you’re pretty consistently playing a Gibson SG guitar, but for many years you played an Ibanez guitar. Can you tell me about the history of that Ibanez guitar, which has been so instrumental in Max Creek’s sound over the years and how it made its way into the band?
Scott: Sure. Wait a minute though. Did you mean this guitar right here? Is that what you’re talking about? I got the amp on back there. I was just teaching a guitar lesson before this. So, I was playing a Travis Bean. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Travis Beans, in fact, that’s right over there, too. But they’re an aluminum neck guitar, which is good in a lot of ways and it’s bad in a lot of ways. One of the ways it’s bad is that when you put your hand on the guitar and you keep it there for a long period of time, the aluminum heats up. And then if you put your hand up here and keep it there for a long time, this part cools down and that part heats up.
And so what ends up happening is that thing drifts out of tune frequently. And so we were about to record our live album, Drink the Stars, and I said, “I can’t deal with trying to keep this thing in tune.” So I bought that guitar brand new at Wurlitzer in Boston, just for the making of Drink the Stars. And then, I’ve modified it a few years later, that was in 1981. And then a few years later I modified it. I don’t know how tech heavy you want to get, but essentially I was trying to get more of a Strat sound out of it. And I figured out a way to get more of a Strat sound out of it. This particular model, they only made 84 of. There’s a lot of them that are similar that they were making before 1981, but there’s only 84 of this particular model. And so to the Ibanez collectors, they’re coveted a little bit. So a couple of people I know, collect them.
Korre: Did you know it at the time when you got it that it was that rare? Or did you learn that later?
Scott: No, I didn’t know what I was doing. I just went into the Wurlitzer Boston and saw that guitar and thought — and I had done a minimal amount of research on Ibanez because I knew that Bob Weir was designing guitars with Ibanez and that’s one of the models that he influenced. In fact, I have pictures of Garcia playing a similar model, like a prototype of that, and Weir planning a prototype of that. And it was really nice. It sounds really nice, but I wanted to get a Strat sound. So I modified it to get a Strat sound in a very special way, I’m not going to give away the store. So the people that buy these models, they won’t make the sounds that this one makes, because this one I’ve rewired in the back a little bit.
Korre: I should say a couple of people reached out to me before this interview with some more tech questions. So I’ll wade into these questions and tell me if they’re OK to ask. Why did you then change to the SG? What prompted that change?
Scott: Usually all my gear — anything I buy that has to do with music if it’s for the studio or for stage gear or anything — is all deductible off my musician’s income as an expense. So a few years ago, it was like New Year’s Eve, we were playing a Toad’s. We had set up and sound checked, and I was thinking it’s New Year’s Eve and I have not bought enough gear to make my Creek income go away. I need more gear. And so, I went onto reverb.com and I’m thinking to myself, well, what have I always wanted? And I’ve always wanted an SG. Chicago Transit Authority, their first album, there was a picture of Terry Kath on the back playing an SG. And he actually doesn’t play an SG for the most of his Chicago time. But, I just liked the way the guitar looked.
And so I went on reverb.com and found — scrolling through SGs and I’m like, “Oh, that one’s kind of cool.” And it’s got different pickups than your typical SG does. I just bought it. And I also bought a Gretsch lap steel because I always wanted one of those, too. And so the guitar came a week later or so. And so I set up my rig upstairs in the living room and plugged in the Ibanez and played the Ibanez for a little while to get the feel of it and feel how it sound so that I could do a good comparison. And then I plugged in the SG. SG played like absolute butter. It was unbelievable. And then I switched it into single coil. And it sounded just like the Ibanez in single coil.
And so I did a couple of tests to figure out which pickups were lit up. And it had been wired originally the exact same way that I had rewired the Ibanez. Like it was already set up in a way to get the sounds that I had rewired the Ibanez to get. So, I started bringing them both to the gig and just playing the SG. And eventually I just stopped bringing the Ibanez to the gig. The SG, it plays like butter. It does that thing with the Straty single coil sound that I get out of the Ibanez. But the other thing that it does is when I go up high, it just sings. And that’s kind of the one thing that the Ibanez — it kind of does it, but it’s not quite there.
So, that’s why I’ve stuck with the SG. It just has a couple of things. And, I also feel like, I think it changes my playing a little bit. I think I play a little edgier with it than I did with the Ibanez, I think. And I like that.
Korre: Tell me about the sound you’re able to create on stage when you connect your guitar to your pedals and you get your effects in your amp. Is there an approach to your stage sound that’s uniquely you? Or how do you approach that?
Scott: I think I sound like me no matter what. No matter what the effects are. No matter what the amp is. And I think that’s true of a lot of people. I had a conversation about this with Mike Gordon, where he was playing bass and it was him and David Schools from Widespread and Phil Lesh. And they were like trying the same bass rig and when they’d switch and the other one would put the bass on, it’s the same rig, but when Phil was playing, it sounded like Phil. And when Mike was playing, it sounded like Mike.
So, I think there’s something to be said that players sound like them, no matter what rig they play through. So all that said, my ears are shot. And so I get a sound that I enjoy, and hopefully isn’t too tinny for other people to enjoy. There’s clean and then there’s all the special effects. The special effects are like, OK, how weird can I get? You know what I mean? Like I have this latest pedal is a guitar synthesizer pedal, which does all sorts of — I’ve used it super sparingly, but it does all sorts of nasty stuff.
Korre: Is that the C4 Synth? I got a question submitted about that, actually, if that’s what you’re talking about.
Scott: Yes. That’s the C4 Synth, bought from Source Audio is the company. They made the C4 Synth and they made a batch of like a few hundred and they sold out like immediately. And so, I know a guy over there because they’re right up the street from me in Waltham. And so, he always invites me over to the warehouse to try out new pedals and stuff like that. So I saw this C4 Synth online. I saw some demos and I wrote him an email, “I got to get this. I got to get one of these.” And he said, “We have none right now. The batch sold out in like days.”
And then he wrote me back a little while later and he’s like, “You know what? I have the circuits and the boards and everything, but we don’t have any of the actual boxes. I have some hand-painted boxes for the prototypes. If you don’t mind a non-official case for it. Like a hand painted case.” And he sent me a picture of six different things that he had done by hand and written the controls on by hand. And I’m like, “All right. Yeah, give me one of those.” So it’s kind of like this bastard C4 pedal that doesn’t really exist.”
Korre: So, I’m curious, at this stage, in your career, do you enjoy going into the studio to record more or less than that experience when you were younger in your career? Or is it just different now?
Scott: Going into the studio and recording is something that I wish I had had the opportunity to do a lot more of during my career. Obviously this is audio only, but let me see if I can …
Korre: I’m getting a tour. This is fun.
Scott: Yeah. You’re getting a tour. So there’s multiple keyboards and there’s keyboards here and then there’s interfaces in a rack mountable stuff and mixers and headphones. And then back there, well, you can’t see it now, but there’s an amp back there, and a rack of guitars. And then that’s the other side of the studio. There’s a full drum set and there’s a bass rig all set up. And I’ve invested all the money, well, not all the money that I make, but I’ve invested a lot of money in just good studio monitors, a good interface, and a Pro Tools subscription and Ableton Live, the current Ableton Live set up. I don’t know if you’re familiar with any of these. And Logic.
So I have all these DAWs. But most of it is spent trying to write in the studio. I have always written with tape recorders and stuff like that. So most of it is focused on writing. But then when I write, I also try to mix and produce and master tracks. And I’ve released a couple of things on Spotify and Amazon and all that stuff. Getting to record the albums with Mike has been an interesting thing, too. Not only because I’m writing a lot of it with him, but also the studio experience. The last album we hired Shawn Everett, who is the producer of the Alabama Shakes’ Grammy winning albums. Like he wins Grammys. And so he came in as a producer and he’s running Pro Tools, which is what I use for a lot of it. And to watch him work — like the way he works in a studio. What he wants to do is get as many things recorded so that he has this huge pallet of stuff to work from.
Just an example, he had me record a rhythm guitar part. It was just a straight rhythm guitar part. The way he had it recorded is I was plugged into my rig. I was plugged into it like a 1950s Gibson amplifier. I was plugged directly into the board. And then inside the isolation booth, he had a mannequin head with two microphones in the ears. And so that’s five channels of guitar. And so, when he gets into the mixing part of it, he’s got this whole pallet of stuff that he can use to shape just the one guitar part. You know what I mean? But it’s like the guitar part recorded through nasty tubes. The guitar part recorded through clean tubes and then a straight guitar sound. And then he’s got the strumming picking sound of the electric guitar in the control booth.
So, part of the song goes to like an acousticy kind of bridge. And so he just turns the guitar amps down. Brings up the direct sound and the head microphones, so you can hear the pick going back and forth. And all of a sudden it sounds more acousticy, but it’s still the same guitar playing the same part. So, like tricks like that — recording tricks like that. The technology is completely different. So it changes the whole aspect of recording.
Korre: Can you tell me what you’re working on in your solo career?
Scott: Well, I’m glad you asked because I spent most of my time making music in my basement. That’s where I make music most of the time. And in doing that, I try to explore with recording technologies and whatever. And I have released a couple of things on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, all that stuff. So yeah, there’s a couple things out there and there’s more to come.
Korre: Are you telling me there’s an album in your future?
Scott: I would love to do an album, but I still have more work to do to get the material together, but there’s a bunch of material. Yes.
Korre: So we should look you up online. And I know there’s a couple singles that came out a year or two ago. Let’s see, one of them was called Autumn. I’m going off of memory here.
Scott: Oh yeah. So you’re familiar already with what I’ve released.
Korre: And then, was it — I’m going to get this wrong. Is it Into the Night? What was the one that came out around Halloween last year?
Scott: Creatures Of the Night.
Korre: Creatures of the Night. Yeah, that was awesome. That was really cool. I love that one. That was like a total surprise when I saw that. This is cool.
Scott: Yeah. That’s all done down in the basement. Down here.
Korre: Yeah. Autumn was actually pretty interesting. When I heard that, that is a different direction. Like when I heard that, I was actually caught a little off guard in a good way. Because I was not maybe expecting that. But it was really cool.
Scott: Yeah. Well, you know, I try to stay current, and by current I try to listen to the stuff from the 90s. I like Beck and I used to listen to this band a lot called Delerium, which is these two guys up in Canada. And all they do is electronic music. And they used to do like ambient electronic stuff. But then they started — they would record an instrumental track and they would ship it off to female singers all around the world, really. And each female singer would write and record stuff over the top of it. And then they’d release these albums. So every album is these two guys playing all the music and different female vocalists that composed the lyrics for each one of those. The lyrics are pretty much horrible, but the production is pretty awesome. And so it’s kind of a dark side.
I like a lot of weird music. I don’t sit down and listen to a lot of Grateful Dead all the time. You know what I mean? Like I do listen to the Dead, but I listen to a lot of different things. And I’m influenced by a lot of different things. I’m influenced by African music. Fela Kuti is a big influence. So, when I’m writing, I’m always trying to push the envelope of what style that I’m in. And I can’t really play the drums. So, most of the time it’s going to be electronic drums or drum machines or loops or stuff like that. So that’s kind of why it goes in those different directions.
Korre: I’m curious. Outside of music, are there ways you express your creativity? Are you naturally a creative person and you’re doing other things besides music, too?
Scott: Well, I’m a computer scientist. I am a programmer full time. I write code and that’s an aspect of creativity. It’s creative. It is a creative outlet in that aspect. There’s a lot of ways I create music that are different. Like I’m not just a guitar player. I actually started on piano. So there’s keyboards all over this place and there’s bass right behind me. There’s a fretless bass right behind me. I played upright string bass in string quartets in high school. And then there’s a drum set over there. But there’s also a mandolin. There’s a banjo. And there’s a Turkish baglama saz hanging on my wall in the living room. And there’s a pedal steel in my office.
So the music takes up a lot of my creativity, especially working full time and having limited amount of time to actually be creative. When I was younger, I would draw. I used to have an airbrush and I would mess around with the airbrush and stuff. But I was never any sort of serious about art or anything like that.
Korre: I don’t know if you know this, but I saw you in Milwaukee in 2017 when you were on tour with Mike Gordon at the Pabst Theater. I was blown away by you. And what introduced this whole Max Creek thing to me is when I asked my friend who that guitar player is and we looked you up online and everything else is history. But back in 2017, you had a blog — a Blog from the Road — and it’s been a little dusty. There hasn’t been any posts for a while. And I’m wondering, are you going to pick up blogging anytime soon again?
Scott: I don’t know. I kind of blog privately anyway. I have a studio blog where I track everything that I do and I write down everything that I do. It wouldn’t be of any interest to anybody, even if you were a studio geek, because it’s just me feeling my way through tech, trying to learn things or whatever. So, yeah. The Blog from the Road was cool.
Korre: Or maybe I could interest you in a podcast.
Scott: I’ve thought about doing a podcast, actually. I have thought about doing that. Absolutely. That’s definitely been something that I’ve considered. Another thing that my wife and I make promotional videos for Max Creek. I don’t know if you see any of those that get posted. But that’s kind of a creative thing, where we sit down and like, “Well, what can we do? That’s outlandish and crazy.” So that’s definitely a creative outlet. Right before the pandemic actually started, my wife got involved in this thing where she started taking pictures of sad chairs. Like you’re driving on the side of the road. Somebody has got a chair with a free sign on it. And so, she started doing this Instagram thing — the sad chairs on Instagram.
And for the pandemic, I wasn’t gigging. I was working from home. We were just home, home, home all the time. And so we would gas up the car on the weekend and just go driving around, looking for sad chairs and taking pictures of sad chairs. So that kind of turned into a very creative thing. I mean, it’s her thing, but I definitely help as much as I can. But that’s kind of a creative thing, just the whole aspect of photography, which has taken on a whole different thing now with iPhone technology. And the technology of cameras is just amazing, you know? So, so that’s, so I’m creative in that way, I guess, minimally.
Korre: Well, I’ll wrap it up with one more question for you. What are you looking forward to most when it comes to Max Creek?
Scott: There’s a whole bunch of sarcastic answers that go through my head. That’s a tough question. I guess I look forward to the unknown of what’s yet to come. It’s been 50 years, or 49 for me, but all these years playing together has developed this thing that you can’t really have with anybody else. You can come close, maybe, where you can have chemistry with other musicians, but there’s something about this longevity and being with these people for this long, develops this relationship of ESP — being able to read each other. And it just keeps going. It just keeps going and getting more intense and better and developing, going into new places. And so I guess I look forward to more of that. More of the exploration.
Korre: All right, Scott, it’s been a lot of fun talking with you. Thank you so much for joining me on Hooked on Creek.
Scott: Oh, it was a blast and I apologize for the long-winded answers. But it was good. You asked good questions. You asked some tough questions, like what does Leaves mean? But, it was a blast. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it a lot.
Korre: All right. Cool. Thank you.
Well, I had a lot of fun talking with Scott and I really hope you enjoyed listening to our conversation. Scott was very, very generous with his time and his participation in this podcast means a lot to me. If you are curious, during the introduction to this episode I played a portion of Leaves performed by Max Creek live at Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 21, 2008.
And as always, let me know if you have suggestions for future episodes or recommendations on people to interview for this podcast. You can get in touch with me via the contact link on the Hooked on Creek website at hookedoncreek.com or via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Just search for Hooked on Creek to get connected. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for tuning in.