Episode 38: A conversation with Bill Carbone from Max Creek

Episode 38 of Hooked on Creek features my interview with Bill Carbone. Bill plays drums and sings in Max Creek.

In this episode, you will hear Bill talk about his background in music, his introduction to Max Creek, his perspectives on playing in the band and how music has influenced his life.

Links to learn more:

Bill Carbone singing and playing drums in Max Creek.

Episode 38 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 38.

Thank you for joining me on this very special episode of Hooked on Creek that features my interview with Bill Carbone from Max Creek. Bill has been playing drums in Max Creek since 2011. And in this episode, you are going to hear Bill talk about his background in music, his introduction to Max Creek, his perspectives on playing in the band and how music has influenced his life. We cover a lot of topics in our conversation, including questions submitted by fans of Max Creek. I even snuck in a couple questions that former drummers Greg Vasso and Scott Allshouse had for Bill. I think you are really going to enjoy learning about Bill’s passion for music, his love of Max Creek and the relationships he has developed with current and former members of the band.

As a reminder, you can read a full transcript of my interview with Bill Carbone by visiting the Hooked on Creek website at hookedoncreek.com. Alright, we have a lot to get to, so let’s get started.

Korre: Bill Carbone, welcome to Hooked on Creek.

Bill: Right on Korre. Thanks for having me.

Korre: It’s so great to have you on this podcast, finally. When you’re sitting up on stage and you’re looking out at the crowd in between Scott, Mark and John — when you see those faces of Creek Freaks — what are you thinking? What are you feeling?

Bill: So lucky. I’m telling you, like I’ve almost broke down crying sometimes on stage. Because my dreams as a young person were to be in a band like Phish, to make it and get to jam. Pretty unreasonable dream, really, when it comes down to it. It’s so unlikely to happen, but I got what I wanted. I get to play the greatest music with the greatest people and there’s this crowd of people that support it and cheer it on. And like there’s this culture around it. And there’s the Max Creek phrase, “thanks for being here.” That’s how I feel. Like, “thanks for having me here.” When I joined, the band was 40-years deep. So, I didn’t go through the hard parts. I joined. It’s all established. The people are there, right? It’s not as big as it once was, for sure, but I got to do the good stuff. So, I feel really grateful.

I also come back to one of my favorite Bob Marley lines all the time, which is, “one good thing about the music, when it hits you feel no pain.” And, we’re so kind of fucked as a country right now. There’s so much hate and there’s so much division. And, we’re so in to dividing ourselves into groups about various beliefs and social media posts — and I’m prone to it, too. I’m not judging. But at a concert — a good concert — it all melts away. As soon as the music starts, nobody thinks about that stuff anymore. And, I don’t think about it and I know when I’m in the audience of a great show, I don’t think about it. And, I know the crowd out there doesn’t think about it. It’s like you’ve got this chance to create the perfect world for a couple hours and it’s just awesome. I’m so grateful for it.

Korre: I want to talk about your history with Max Creek and some of the other ways music has shaped your life. But first, where did your love of music come from and when did you first recognize the power of music?

Bill: I am the MTV generation. I was born in ’77 and my mom just had it on. She used it almost like a radio. I just remember the early MTV videos. They’re in my deep consciousness. And honestly by the time I was in fourth grade, I knew that I was going to be in Poison.

Korre: The band Poison.

Bill: The band Poison. Yeah. That seemed to me like the greatest possible outcome — hair rock, late ’80s, MTV, really big drum sets, really big hair, girls on cars. I don’t even think I cared about the girls on cars, though. I was really ignoring them. Just the power and glory of hair rock. You look at it now, but at the time it felt like a really big deal.

Korre: Was there a guiding hand to push you into picking up an instrument or learning music?

Bill: I mean, my dad played guitar, but he had kind of stopped. My mom had played piano and stopped. Just nobody forced it. I remember in third grade in school you could join the orchestra, but I wanted to play guitar and there was no guitar. So I was like, “Well, I don’t wanna do that.” And then in fourth grade there was concert band started. And I don’t know why, I was like, “I wanna play the drums.” And that was it. And by fifth grade I was all in, getting all the drum catalogs and looking at the 29-piece setups that I wanted and all that.

I’m not the biggest guy, so I wasn’t the greatest athlete. I knew pretty young that my baseball fantasy was not real. But this felt great. I loved it right away. Like it just felt so cool and I was hungry for it. So I was in school band and I was taking private drum set lessons. But, I really have this visceral memory of being like between fifth and sixth grade this summer and trying to figure out what to do next on drums. But I didn’t really have a drum mentor around me, like in my drum lesson every week they would show me like a beat and fill or like a couple little things. But I didn’t have this sense of how to expand it. So I remember taking all my concert band music for school and trying to figure out how to play two parts at the same time and stuff. I don’t know why, the only thing I knew to look to was paper. And I didn’t think like, “Let’s put on this song I like and see if I can learn the beat.” I just looked at the paper. I guess that was the beginning for me. Yeah.

Korre: I would imagine as a drummer growing up, were you searching for bands to play in as you entered high school? Was that a thing you did?

Bill: We started them. Dude, my first band was in fifth grade. It was two rappers and me on drums and we had one song called cheese.

Korre: What was the name of the band? I gotta know. Do you remember?

Bill: I don’t remember. But was Geoff Scott, Chris Schzkliski and me. They were a rap duo first. We just did one song at the fifth grade talent show and it went really badly. I remember that. But then in sixth grade we started a real band. So, talent shows and battle of the bands were definitely the stomping ground at first, but I was always a go-getter. So by like by eighth grade, I was calling music venues in Connecticut and bars and trying to book us gigs. And I actually got us a few. There was a few weird ones where they were like, “Wait, what?” when we showed up. By high school, the bands were serious. By the time I was a junior in high school, I had a band that was playing some of the same places Creek was playing. I remember playing the Globe Theater, which is now Wall Street in Norwalk where Creek just played. But I knew that Creek had played there. Yeah.

Korre: So at some point in time, you’re looking ahead and looking at where you want go to school, what kind of career you want to have and then music sort of stepped into that role, too. Talk about that.

Bill: Yeah. I mean, I have to acknowledge my privilege when I talk about this. I never saw anything but music as the future. I am just from a middle-class family. So, I was able to go to college and do music. It’s not like I was a trust-fund kid or something, but I had this knowledge of a safety net. Like if everything failed, I could lean on my parents. So, it was always music. So I ended up going to Boston. I got a half-ride scholarship to go to Northeastern if I played in every ensemble, including the pep band. And I hated it so much. And I look back and I’m like, “What a bastard, I was.” I got a half-ride scholarship and I complained about it. But I ended up transferring down the street to New England Conservatory. I mean, my vision was always music. By high school, I had bands that were working professionally. Some of those guys and me ended up in Boston.

We had a band called Miracle Orchestra. Garrett, the bass player in The Motet, was in the Miracle Orchestra with me. The sax player, Jared Sims, is now the head of jazz in Morgantown at West Virginia University. And we did well. Our model was Phish. Like I’m the Phish generation. I’m much deeper of a Deadhead, but I loved Phish, especially like ’92 to ’96. We went to so many shows. And then our model was that kind of thing. And there was so much to do. It was such a lively time for music, especially in the Northeast. Cities are so close here, right? So every city had two or three venues you could play at. So you could live in Boston and within two hours of Boston, there was like 10 different geographies you could reach and still make it home and sleep in your bed. That was the deal. Miracle Orchestra was doing really well for a while. Like we had a following in Denver. We did national tours a couple times. But it didn’t last.

Korre: I’m wondering, as a student of music, is there something attractive to Grateful Dead and Phish music that you see that you can explore with your music background? What was your attraction to that genre of music?

Bill: Totally man. By the time I was really getting serious about learning music, jazz had become sort of the academic standard, right? It’s the Wynton Marsalis era and jazz is starting to be called America’s classical music. Totally love jazz. And I worked really hard at playing it. But, I’m always culturally an outsider. Jazz is black American music. And on top of that, my non-cultural upbringing in the world that created jazz. It’s also virtuosic to an extent that I recognize pretty quickly, yeah, I’m pretty good, but that’s something different.

But in jazz there’s standards. And there’s this huge body of material that everyone learns and then learns to play through. You don’t play There Will Never Be Another You because you want to play it exactly like the recording. You play it because it’s a composition that serves as a starting point for exploration. And it gives you all the material to work with to express yourself through that song. And then to come back to that song. I mean, I also just described the Grateful Dead, right? That’s what Playing in the Band is, or that’s what He’s Gone is. Any of these songs, they are the material. But really what musicians I think go crazy about for the Dead is that they created an improvisational language.

So you learn the songs and the songs are awesome and the songs are awesome because you know them, too. So, I can play them and right away you’re pulled in. But then when the improvisation starts, it’s just like a jazz standard. I’m in a space that’s been created. I have language material to work with from them and from the things that they loved and from the things that I love and it can all come through. And I can be myself in that space. So to me, that’s the beauty of it.

And actually one of the things I love most about Max Creek is that people make comparisons to the Dead. And they had a little period in the 80s where they played lots of Dead songs. To some people that remember that period, they’re like a Dead cover band, but Max Creek is not a Dead cover band. But the spirit of improvisation is from that generation. I think they developed their musical language almost concurrently, or maybe just a few years later. So it’s got the same genetic information in it. All these things that are happening in the United States, musically, the Band, Little Feet, Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, a million other things — The Flying Burrito Brothers, depending on who you talk to in the band. All of that is mixed in there. And so it’s like a different recipe made from the same basic materials.

Korre: Have you spent your life in the Northeast? Is that right?

Bill: Always lived in either Connecticut, Boston or New York city.

Korre: So, talk to me about the first time you heard of this band Max Creek or maybe heard the music of Max Creek. What was that first exposure like?

Bill: I remember when I first started trading tapes, people being like, “You gotta check out this band Max Creek. And then I think I got a Dead tape that had a couple filler songs on the end of it that was Creek — She’s Here and something else. I totally remember that. And then somebody gave me a Max Creek tape. I wish I had kept my tapes. I traded like 300 Dead and Phish and Max Creek tapes for like a 12 pack of beer when I moved to New York City. You can’t keep everything. Yeah, I remember hearing it and being like, “Wow, this is so cool.” And then from playing music, I always met kids that lived in other towns.

So I had a friend that lived a couple towns over, which was the town the Vasso was from. So he knew Vasso and like worshiped Vasso, who was the drummer at the time. So he’s like, “You gotta come with me. Let’s go see Creek.” So, I went a couple times. This is before GPS. I remember trying to get to The Sting in New Britain and getting really lost and paying my $10 and walking in and catching like the last 15 minutes. Then I remember seeing them not lots of times, but a couple other times.

My real visceral memory of watching while Vasso was in the band, pretty sure he had his white Yamaha kit set up. I can pictures the three toms across the front and they did Same Things. So it was just him and Scott out there. And he was playing that like thundering tom-tom thing. And I was just like, “Well, shit. This is about as good as it gets.” And, just felt like it was so powerful and so cool. And then, I was playing in this Dead cover band called Shakedown — not often, when nobody else could do it they would call me because I was only 17.

So one night they had Vasso on drums. They’re still around, by the way. Dave Frankel is still doing it. But, they had Vasso playing kit and they were like, “Bill, just bring some percussion and come play.” And, Vasso was super sweet and kind to me, even though I was just like a kid with a conga drum and a cowbell sitting next to him all night. We’ve been friends ever since. We just double drummed the other night. It was really nice to see him. It’s not like we see each other every month or sometimes even every year, but we’ve been friends ever since then. And he’s just a good dude. So he kind of helped reintroduce me to the band many years later. Yeah.

Korre: Well, talk about that. What were the events that led to you ultimately getting this gig with Max Creek?

Bill: So I lived in Boston from ’95 to ’05. Played in a bunch of different bands. But then I got a fellowship to go to Wesleyan University in Connecticut for ethnomusicology. So, my wife and I moved to Middletown, Connecticut, back to the area. I’d been up in Boston and gigging like a madman in a million bands and stuff. And like, “OK, I’m going to stop playing gigs and just do this grad school thing and like try to be a professor somewhere or something.” And that lasted for like a year, but I stayed in school. But the not playing music thing — the next year my friend from Boston was playing with Melvin Sparks and called and was like, “We need a sub to do a weekend of festival gigs with Melvin Sparks.” And I was like, “OK.” And then Melvin asked me to join his band and then I was back in. Every time I think I’m out, they pull me back in.

So, I’m in Connecticut. I’m making new friends. I hooked up with Matt Zeiner, who’s good friends with Mark, who’s playing in Matt Zeiner Band. Mark sat in. I reconnected with Vasso because Vasso’s family still lived in Branford. And I connected with him a couple times. And they were doing like the drummer by committee thing. So, Vasso was back in rotation. Allshouse was in the band, but missing a lot of gigs because of his job. And then DeGugs [Greg DeGuglielmo] was back in. So every show there was two drummers. I wasn’t there, but as far as I know, a lot of times the guys in the band didn’t know which two drummers would be there until they showed up. Eric, the manager at the time, I think he wanted some steady stuff.

So, the bands I was playing in were playing StrangeCreek. I was playing with Beau Sasser a lot, who I still play with a lot. Jay and I were in a band together that I had started called Buru Style, which was like weird hipster, dub music. I still think it was a great, great band. It’s how I met Jay. And we were doing lots and lots of recording, but also gigging. We were backing singers — reggae, singers, soul singers — and then also doing like weird Brooklyn shows as an instrumental dub thing. And it was really fun.

So, we were kind of like beating around on the fringes of the scene that Max Creek was playing the real shows. And, Vasso decided he was done. He just needed a break from gigging. He wanted to take some time away and not be traveling. And so he said to Eric, you should call this guy. I actually met Eric first at a festival at StrangeCreek, I think, just hanging out. And then he called me later that week and was like, “We need somebody to play Sterling Stage, like tomorrow.” And so, I just did it. I knew like one song.

It was actually me and Vasso, but the whole thing was that I was supposed to replace Greg and it was going to be me and Allshouse. But Allshouse’s job — Allshouse has a crazy cool job as a sound engineer. He was doing live sporting events. He was getting sent all over the place. And it just turned out that every time it was supposed to be the two of us, something happened and he didn’t make it.

And so, I subbed a few times in 2011 and then in late fall they wanted to do a series of shows with me and another drummer just to like, see how it worked. But it worked out that I think Scott couldn’t do any of them. So they said, “Is there another drum set player you’re comfortable playing with?” And I was like, “Well, how about this guy, Jay? He plays percussion.” And in typical Creek energy. they were like, “Whatever.” So I dragged Jay down. And Jay’s awesome. And immediately they were like, “He’s cool. He can stay.” And, Jay and I already like knew and loved each other. So there wasn’t like any of this like weird competition or friction. It was just kind of like support. So yeah.

We did a handful of gigs. So that was in fall of 2011 — the first gigs with me and Jay, this series of gigs at Arch Street — which I couldn’t make myself listen to those if I tried. I’m so scared to hear what they sound like. Because nobody told me anything. Look, you join another band and somebody’s going to be like, “All right. Here’s the playlist. There’s 20 songs. Or, the band knows 50 songs. You have to learn all 50, but for your first show, here’s the set list. So get these ready. Like, are you kidding? And, none of the stuff was on the internet yet. I’m the one who got all the Creek stuff on the streamers. So, I didn’t have any of their albums. And, I had nobody giving me any guidance whatsoever. So I just went on archive.org. And what’s on archive.org? Like a billion hours of Max Creek over the course of 40 years. It’s like, “Well, OK.” So I just had to dive in and start trying to learn songs.

But like the whole first year, Scott turned around and just looked at me and rode me really hard in his way, which was like, awesome. And I would always ask, “Well, what do you want me to do here? What do you want me to do there?” And to a man, Scott, John, and Mark would say, “We’re not going to tell you. You got to figure it out because we want you to do it your way.” The first year was like abject terror, really. Like a weird combination of joy and terror because it was so exciting to do. But also like at the same time, Creek’s repertoire is so huge and I’m sure you’ve noticed Mark likes not to repeat things.

So I’m doing gigs, but it’s not like the next gig I play the same songs again. If I was to do it again, knowing what I know now, there’s a method I could apply, but I didn’t know. Creek isn’t a band that talks about — they talk to each other about all kinds of things, but they’ do not sit and talk about the organization. So Jay and I were just like, “I don’t know if we’re in this band or what’s going on here”, for at least like eight months or so. But fun times and cool. And, I learned much more than songs from them, we will put it that way.

Korre: In preparing for this interview, I did reach out to some Max Creek fans. And I also got in touch with both Greg Vasso and Scott Allshouse, who both contributed a question for you. You touched on this one a little bit, but Greg Vasso wanted me to ask you to talk about the experience of stepping into the drummer role after him. Were there things you did to get comfortable with being the new drummer? Did you seek advice from earlier drummers or members of the band? I think you talked a little bit about that, but what was that like to sort of step into that role after him?

Bill: I definitely sought advice from Vasso. He was the one that I was close enough with that I would just call. Or, I remember going out to sushi with Greg. But his advice was like, “Well, I do it different every time.” I remember really specifically him talking about the middle section of Big Boat, which has the 7/8 riff that Mark solos over but the drums play 4 through it. So, it’s like every two times it wraps around and hits the beginning. And I asked him about that and he is like, “Well, yeah. Sometimes I just play 4 right through it really hard. But you know, sometimes I just nail that 7 and just like play 7.” It’s like everybody says the same thing, right? It’s like if you ask a poker player for advice. You’re like, “Well, what do you do when I have a pair of Kings?” They’re like, “Well, it depends.” You know?

But I did listen a lot. I remember downloading tons of shows from archive and really trying to listen to different eras. It’s funny because the guys that I knew were Scott and Greg Vasso, and I met Degugs a couple times. But I only really got to meet Dugugs a little later. But I remember listening — somebody gave me a copy of Drink the Stars and I was like, “OK. This is awesome. I’m learning every song on here.” And I loved Gosselin’s playing. I felt something really different in his playing. Like the rest of us are studied and Bob, he just figured it out. Yeah, he learned rudiments and stuff, but like he did not go to music school. He went and lived in a house with Max Creek somewhere and took acid. So, like really loved his style.

So I was like, “OK. What’s the difference?” I started really thinking about the different ways some of those guys play the same songs. And, what is it that I want to do? And then I also remember Scott Murawski being like, “Why are you listening to all the old stuff? Stop coming in with these old arrangements.” So, I try to take it all in. But, I listened a lot, too. Shows get posted really quickly. So I made it a really big habit to listen right away to the show that we just played. And I’m not a guy that listens to myself playing to think how good I am. I’m a guy that’s like, “Oh my God. You suck.” So that was my own way of constantly hearing like the effect of what I was trying to do, you know?

Korre: Scott Allshouse asked this question. Is there a song that you think you’ve put your mark on as a drummer since joining the band?

Bill: Ooh, I mean, yes. Well, let’s see. The first one that comes to mind is Face, which is funny because I find it to be one of the hardest ones to play. Like I’m never quite sure — actually when we played it the other night double drumming with Vasso, he played almost like a ska beat on it. And I was like, “Oh my God. Is that what I’m supposed to do?” Especially the solo section, I kind of found a way. Jay and I have this kind of deep like West African approach to how we play together on that one that I think is pretty uniquely us. It’s like a place where I always know — Jay changes things all the time, but I know when it comes time to play Face in the solo, he’s gonna get to the timbales and just start ripping it up with timbales and cowbells. And I can play like lots more hi-hat almost like — not Afrobeat, but I guess it’s like Congolese or whatever — they do all these grooves and it’s like just kick drum and hi-hat, lots and lots of it. That, and then I kind of feel the same about the jam in Devil’s Heart. It’s a spot where he and I — I know we’re gonna link in a certain way. Yeah.

Korre: I also have some questions that came in from fans of Max Creek that were posted on the Facebook page. Joe Jeffrey asked what makes the Bill Carbone and Jay Stanley sound work so well together?

Bill: Wow. Well, I’m glad Joe, that you think it works so well together. We’ve been playing together since ’08 or ’09 and we’ve spent a lot of quality time together. So, we spent all this time when we first started recording together and just like being really creative. Jay is so mellow. He’s so virtuosic, like when he explodes, it’s just like, “Oh my God.” But he saves that, right? And so, he’ll also just play tambourine or like triangle or something like that. I never feel like I’m competing with Jay. I love Jay. I love Jay and Jay loves me. I know it. We’re deep. So, there’s just such deep trust. Like we rarely have to talk about anything. We just hear each other’s spaces.

I think then on a technical level, the way we hear each other’s spaces is that he’s basically a master West African drummer from the Mandé people tradition stuff, so like Senegal — if I try to name where all the Mandé people are, I’m going to mess it up, but like djembe culture. And, I am in no way a master drummer in that. But I’ve done lots of West African drum ensembles over the years where I’ve played all the different parts and I love it. And then I’ve done that stuff with him. That music is built on the idea that the big rhythm is an interlocking everything. So even like the drum set that’s behind me, it’s several Ghanaian drummers put together. You get the toms and the bass drums are like one instrument. The snared drum is like what the kaganu would be. And then the symbols are like the bells, you know? And so, that’s three people. We’ve done all this stuff together where he plays one part and I play another part. So when we jam together, I really know how to support him melodic parts on a tom-tom or something. Like when we play drums — do a solo — the same back and forth.

So like, we really think about how we can play in each other’s spaces, as opposed to both of us coming from a drum set tradition where the fill is at the end leading into the next part. For the most part, Jay’s like, “That’s Bill’s job.” Bill plays the fill that sets up the next section, right? But Jay knows that there’s all this other space. So, sometimes if you listen closely, you’ll hear, he takes the fill that leads to my fill. Like it’ll start there and then it comes here, you know? But I’m also listening for him like that. He can take those fills, too. And we’re really pretty in tune with that. And yeah, we take fills on top of each other sometimes. If you play four hours, you’re gonna do that.

But mostly there’s this sense of shared communication and there’s a complete lack of competition. There’s no ego between us whatsoever. Jay would slay me on djembe and congas and timbales, and I love him for that. And, he wouldn’t be able to play a lot of the drum set parts I play. But there’s no competition. Like we’re just supporting each other. You know,

Korre: I have another question here from Jason Cross, he asked how important is the emphasis on improvisational drumming versus fundamental drumming in the building of a new student or in your own development as a drummer?

Bill: Wow. That’s a big question with many parts. But I would say in my development, it’s huge. I think it’s really interesting because it’s one of those questions where it’s like the answer to everything is kind of the same. So music is language, right? So, there’s a language to improvisational drumming and really it comes back to the rudiments. So like the rudiments of marching band are the material that Max Roach used to be the greatest drum soloist in history. Like he’ll never be touched. And what did he do? He literally just took rudiments and made the most amazing voicings of them — instead of just playing them on the snare drum, around the drum set. And then he took that knowledge and he got into West African music and he brought some of that conversation that I was talking about into his own playing. So now he’s doing rudiments and combining like melodic interplay between the different limbs.

And so, the absolute most basic fundamentals and the most advanced things are happening at the exact same time. So, they’re not separate, I guess is my point. So that when you start with somebody, when I start — I’m not really teaching right now, but I used to teach a lot. And I would always start people with a single stroke roll. And all a single stroke roll is, is right left, right left, right left, right left. Can be really slow. It can be really fast. But the thing is just, can you do it in time? Right? And then can you put your foot like at an interval, like 1, 2, 3, 4. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. And once you get that flowing, the single stroke roll is like the snake that never stops. So, you can play it like really metrically with those divisions or like Kreutzmann just rides the snake So, that’s the improv. Once you’ve got that snake happening, the divisions can be anywhere and you can start just like really being really free with it.

But the thing is that like Murawski is super into he will say playing in 1. What he means is that like you stop —James Brown is all about the 1. So, when you play in 1, it’s just boom. And the boom can be anywhere. But that chicka, chicka, chicka, chicka, chicka, chicka goes. It just keeps going. So all of a sudden you’re relying more on the upper structure of it and stopping — like reinforcing that metric time. But it’s still the spirit of that single stroke role. And you’re playing with interplay. Like how can you divide it up in all these different ways? And then the more advanced you get, you’re like, “What am I working into that single stroke role? Am I working double stroke roles?”

And it’s not like I’m thinking about the rudiments while I’m playing. But if you practice them enough, they become part of your language, you know? We used to take Charlie Parker solos and try to play them on the drum set with rudiments. And that’s still that same thing where you’re just like flowing the time. I don’t know if that made any sense, but it does in my head.

Korre: I have another question here from a Max Creek fan. Dave Bonan asked, how has your degree in ethnomusicology helped shape your profession in music in and outside of Max Creek?

Bill: Well, let me first say about Dave Bonan — hi, Dave — that when I first joined the band, he was like my Max Creek teacher. And if you know Dave, he doesn’t really have a filter. So at first I was like, “What’s up with this guy who is telling me what he doesn’t like about my playing.” But then I started realizing that I actually liked him quite a lot because he was really honest. He wouldn’t say, “It sucks what you do on the song.” He would say, “I don’t really like the way you played the beat on this song. I’m gonna send you a version that’s really good.” And then he would. At first I was like, “Well, this is so weird.” But then it’s like, “You know what? This guy’s cool as hell man.” And so, thanks Dave.

So, a lot of that stuff I was saying about me and Jay — the ethnomusicology piece — I’ve spent tons of time checking out music from different cultures and getting to play it, whether it was doing the reggae stuff or the West African stuff with Jay or random things I got to get into when I was at Wesleyan — all these different types of traditions. So, they are definitely pretty deeply a part of how I approach music. So, I don’t know. I don’t ever think about trying to purposefully do it. It just is there. Ethnomusicology is the study of music as culture. So maybe some of the ways I think about the Max Creek world are influenced by the way I think about ethnomusicology or kind of the greater jam band world. Yeah.

Korre: Bill, when you think of 51 years of Max Creek and the different drummers that have been in the band, what thoughts come to mind?

Bill: They’re each unique individuals and they’re each so good. Gosselin wrote the best parts for those songs and had such a beautiful rootsy feeling. Degugs is such a great rock drummer and brought like — he took what Gosselin did and just like totally updated it in his way. I have a hard time putting words to, but I love listening to recordings of him. Vasso was the guy that I saw in high school and just like formative. He’s got this really direct approach to playing. If I think of like what is it these people can do that I can’t, Vasso has got this super direct way of phrasing something that I love. And I think Allshouse is, he’s so fluid and his chops are so buttery and awesome, but he also just plays the song so well. And he’s so happy. To see Scott play, he just brings so much joy to it. So I feel really lucky. I never met Rob Fried and I’ve only heard him. But I love what he did, too. it’s like this distant era, it feels like to me. I just saw it a couple times. I do remember the size of his rig. I don’t know if you’ve heard the stories, but his percussion rig was like a city.

But, I just have so much respect for all those guys. And I’ve got to know all of them now. And it’s like my joke with the band is they’re like, “Oh, it’s a special show. What are we gonna do?” And I’m like, “You’re going to invite all the drummers, obviously.” But the thing is, I don’t mind that. I like it. I think they’re all great people and great musicians. So it’s really awesome to be a part of the legacy as the guy that’s doing it now. And I always am happy when one of those guys is around and I’m always happy to hand them the sticks because I know they’re going to sound awesome. And it’s like, they deserve to get the sticks.

Korre: I want to shift gears here a little bit. I understand during your day job you are the executive director at TeachRock. Can you tell me more about what that is and what TeachRock does?

Bill: Sure. Yeah. We’re a nonprofit founded by Stevie Van Zandt from the E Street Band. The founder’s board is Stevie, Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Bono and Martin Scorsese. I got the job in 2016 as a curriculum writer. Stevie founded TeachRock with a few core principles to guide the mission, which is to preserve the place for the arts in the DNA of public schools, to use the arts as a way to engage every student — especially students in the era of having the internet in your pocket who have all the answers, right here — and then, ultimately to increase graduation rates. So the concept is not, despite our name, which is a misnomer a little bit — we don’t do performance. It’s all about how to integrate arts into everything. I’m now the executive director. So, I get to start really cool projects.

One of my coolest recent projects brings ethnomusicology and everything together. Mickey Hart is the really the person who introduced me to the concept of ethnomusicology when I was a kid. And, I saw a video of him with The Beam talking about Pythagoras, as The Beam, as a monochord and like the embodiment of the Pythagorean theorem. And I was like, “Shit man. That’s algebra.” So I talked to some of my colleagues and I was like, “Can we make algebra curriculum about The Beam?” And they were like, “Yeah, actually that would be pretty cool.” So I just knocked on enough doors. I got to Mickey’s management. And I was like, “OK. Here’s the deal. Here’s who we are. I want to make an algebra curriculum that uses The Beam. Would you guys be a part of it?” And they were like, “All right. Send us some material and we’ll get back to you.”

So I sent them some material and they called back. They’re like, “We love this. Let’s do it.” So we actually created a unit of algebra material that is Mickey Hart math. And there’s videos of him. There’s custom videos that he made for us in the lesson plan. So if you were in eighth or ninth grade taking algebra right now, you could have Mickey Hart on camera in your classroom.

So, we are what’s called an open educational resource, which means that all the curriculum we make is on our site and it’s openly accessible. It’s free. So, the concept there is that we can do things like this. We can be out in front of textbooks. We can embrace multimedia we are all standards aligned, so any teacher can just pull it in. Like any textbook that gets introduced to a school has to get approved by the board of ed. So, we’re able to offer things beyond that structure. So it could be something like the Mickey math. It could be things like we have awesome Pride Month material that uses disco as a way to look at New York in the ‘70s and introduce issues of trans rights and key trans activists.

There’s so much different stuff. We have like 300 different resources. We have partnerships with CNN, PBS, the Dead, the Beatles — all these people to do this really good work. As an open educational resource there’s about 60,000 registered users. You just have to make an account to use it. It’s free. And they represent all 50 states. But, we’re also working directly with over 100 schools in five states. In those situations, we’re helping them write arts integration into their curriculum map. So, OK. How can we help you make sure that at least a couple math lessons a semester have music in them?

And the concept is, there’s a few key things. One is that music is the most amazing way to have a positive representation of all people, right? It’s one thing to have Black History Month and talk about civil rights, but that’s not really the purpose. The purpose is like, let’s show greatness. Let’s show joy. And what’s better than music, right? For that, or for women or for — pretty much any group in the United States has contributed to our popular culture. So there’s these ways to do that and put really positive representation in.

And it’s going really, really well. I have to say, we’re in this amazing phase of getting evaluations back and just seeing that what we’re doing is working. As you can tell, I love it. It’s a super cool job. I get to work with Stevie a lot. He’s pretty into all of it. And so, it’s the greatest day job ever because it’s still music.

Korre: Related to what you just talked about. I have a question here from Jonathan Winalski who asked, do you have any good Steven Van Zandt stories? And do you know if Little Steven has an awareness of Max Creek?

Bill: I don’t think he has an awareness of Max Creek. And in fact, I’ve kept the two worlds pretty separate for a long time. He does know that I play drums now. It took a long time.

My favorite story about him is getting to watch him produce a band one day. It was back when we all still went to the office all the time, which we don’t do anymore. I work from home now. But the office is a loft space in the West Village that has his recording studio in it. And then his radio station, the Underground Garage — all the people that work for that are there. They kind of run as record label, too. And then there’s a few other like Stevie associated business people all in this giant loft in the West Village — like open floor plan, not a wall to be found. There’s no privacy. None.

So it was a Monday holiday of some sort. My family was away and I was like, “You know what? I’m going to go in and work today. And I’ll take a holiday another day.” So nobody was in there, except for me. But then a band comes in that he was producing, that he had signed to his label. They were supposed to come in to do a couple singles. And the deal with Stevie’s label, I’m pretty sure, is that he produces the singles and then the house producer produces the rest. So, he’s going in and they’re playing the single and he comes out and he’s pacing. And I can tell he doesn’t like the song. He goes back in. They play the next song. He comes back out. He’s talking to the other producer guy and he goes, “Do these guys have a song we can work with? What have they been listening to? Fucking Rush?” Which cracked me up, right? And the guy is like, “No, no, no, no, man. They got songs. We’re going to figure it out.”

So Stevie is like pacing around and you can tell he’s like, “I don’t know. What are we gonna do?” So they land on a song and he sends everyone out but the singer. And he makes the singer write all the words down. And the singer’s like, “No, no, I got it on my phone.” He’s like, “No, no, no. Pencil and paper. Get it out.” The singer starts writing all the words down. And then Stevie goes through line by line and asks a question about each line. And then he starts changing pronouns. And he’s like, “Well, who’s this song about?” The singer’s like, “Oh, it’s about me and this.” And he is like, “Nobody cares about you. This song has to make people feel like it’s about them. You know?”

So, he keeps going through and like an hour later — I’m just like a fly on the wall — like an hour later, it’s getting pretty damn good. And then he kind of does the same thing with the guitar player and the chords. Like similarly like, “OK. Show me the chords, one by one. What’s that one for? How about you try to move it here?” And then like a couple hours later, this song was awesome. I was like, “OK. I saw the magic.” I saw the power that’s just pretty, pretty epic. Yeah.

Korre: You had mentioned before that you have a background in writing and you’re in music, so you’re creating things and you’ve created the songs The Bees and It Must Be Nice. Are you currently writing songs? Is that something you do on the side?

Bill: I wish I did. In my mind. I do. I’m currently trying to finish my dissertation and working full time and I have two kids. So, what I lack right now is the quiet time to do it. So, both of those songs come from a period in my life when I had more time to just experiment. I’ve had these little moments where I like write a lot of songs. It’s about making space to hear it in your head. So, there’s less of that. My head is full of these other things right now. But, both those songs, they come from different little moments of creativity. So, I know there’ll be other moments of creativity.

I do keep running ideas going. And, Scott and I get together sometimes. Scott Murawski has a studio in his basement. And, he and I have cut maybe four or five tunes that we just write together. A couple that, with a little work, could almost become like epic Creek songs, and then a couple that are straight up like kind of hilarious. But right now, I’m not writing new music, sadly.

Korre: What do you think the future holds for Max Creek, if you had to look ahead over the next few years? Well first of all, can we expect any more Buried Treasure live album releases? I mean, what can we look forward to?

Bill: The Buried Treasure thing? Yeah, sure. It’s just a matter of time. And then, Fred Moore multitracked like almost all of 2021. And so, we got to get to that. But the future, it’s such an interesting question for band that has been around 51 years, right? One of the things I love most is that you talk to Mark Mercier and he’s always thinking like, “We got to do this. We gotta do that. We gotta do this.” It’s not legacy mode. It’s like, let’s be creative. Murawski — like every night needs to be different in some way. Even when I was just learning the songs, he was just like, “Just promise you’ll always go for it.” I think that’s the thing. I don’t know. It’s hard to make promises.

I would love so much to do studio recording and I bring it up like every couple months and sometimes we threaten it. I really think Creek needs to make another studio album. I think that would be the most amazing statement for a band that’s been around 51 years. Like, here’s our first studio album in what, 30 years, or like 25 or something like that.

But I can guarantee that it holds good shows. I think we’re really focusing on trying to do one weekend a month and make that weekend a really great weekend. We’ve even been trying to rehearse before that weekend, every time, which is kind of new for Creek. So that means that old songs come back, new songs come in. Last couple of rehearsals, we were really working on the vocals. So that’s why you got songs like Eyes on the Prize, Mark’s new song, which is a Mavis Staples tune. We worked hours on the vocal harmonies and then Creatures of the Night. And then we rearranged It Must Be Nice and I feel like that song feels really good to play now. But I would love to do a studio album. So maybe you could talk to the guys, Korre.

Korre: I’ll work on it.

Bill: OK.

Korre: We’re getting close to closing out our interview here. But I want to know, what are some of your favorite Max Creek songs to perform?

Bill: Sure. How much time you got? There’s a handful of songs that have these little spots in them that give me this deep, joyous feeling that I don’t know quite how to put into words. But when we’re playing them and they hit. Windows has it to me. Like there’s these moments when Windows opens up and I get this like rush of energy. Emerald Eyes. It’s not just Scott tunes, though.

I really love Devil’s Heart. I feel like sometimes the jam in that one, we get really deep. I love Big Boat with Mark. I love the composition of that song, the arrangement and the drama that’s built into it. It’s one of the more dramatic ones. But when it really comes down to it, like in terms of the jam stuff, I really love Double Dare, when Double Dare clicks. I love the kind of like slow almost reggae feel and the way the solo can just build from nothing. And, I really love Emerald Eyes. If I had to pick one, I might say Emerald Eyes because there’s something so epic about that song. Like take me off the drums. Let me watch somebody else play it. I’ll still feel the same, you know? Yeah.

Korre: All right, Bill. Well, thank you so much for joining me on Hooked on Creek. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk with me about Max Creek and everything you’re doing to advanced music. It means a lot to me.

Bill: Thanks, Korre. It’s so cool that you do this. It’s an honor to know that Hooked on Creek exists and to be joining you on it.

And that concludes episode 38 of Hooked on Creek. I really hope you enjoyed listening to my conversation with Bill Carbone. It was a huge honor having him on this podcast. And big thanks to Greg Vasso, Scott Allshouse, Joe Jeffery, Jason Cross, Dave Bonan and Jonathan Winalski for giving me some good questions to ask Bill. If you are curious, during the introduction to this episode, I played a portion The Bees performed live by Max Creek back on January 25, 2019, at The Met in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

If you have feedback about this episode, I would love to hear from you. 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.