Dave Schools Talks About Success & Side Projects

Dave Schools Talks About Success & Side Projects

In my long and extensive interview with Widespread Panic's Dave Schools, we cover a lot of ground. We discuss his early musical influences, the origins of Widespread Panic, the new Archive Series and beyond. In this excerpt, I decided to provide a glimpse into some of Dave's side projects. This brief part of the interview does not even scratch the surface of the topics we covered. I hope to have the interview up in its entirety by late this weekend. Until then, JC

James Calemine: What has been the most difficult thing to learn after 20 years of building the band up to become what it has now?

Dave Schools: You know really for me, and that’s the only way I can answer that question is trying to figure out how not to be so goddamn uptight all the time. To let things go and because after success you know it’s really easy to lose sight of the principles that guided you in the beginning. You have to work pretty hard to get back around to get back around from your elbow to your ass so to speak and make sure those principles stay in place because a lot of things change over two decades. Success changes things. People around you change. Generally, you don’t really change that much, you’re just doing what you do. For me, it was always hard to keep that stuff in mind. I would get bogged down in ‘How do we maintain this?’ In reality, we never thought that way in the beginning—it was always…what’s the most fun option?

JC: That’s really the only answer. The level of success you guys have achieved…I could see where riddles would appear out of nowhere. Well, you’ve always kept interesting side projects. What’s going on right now? I know you’ve got that blog going on.

DS: Yeah, I’m trying to get back the writing personally because it’s a good exercise for me and sometimes I think I’m okay at it. It’s something that disappeared for a long time and then it came back thanks to John Bell giving me a black and white laptop in 1995. It hurt my hand to hold a pencil. When I got a hold of a keyboard—not even an old typewriter—it changed things. As far as the side projects go—they were always opportunities that started as something fun and casual to do that sort of grew. The Slang Project was just me and Layng Martine having some fun with loops and sending tapes back and forth and adding things and then sending them back to the other guy. He’d add something and then send it to me. That’s fun. We were doing it for us and then Terminus Records comes in and says, ‘Hey—this is pretty cool stuff. We’ll finance you to finish the record. So, that’s what happened and then we made another one. My relationship with Jerry Joseph was always like, ‘I don’t have a girlfriend, I’m bored, what am I going to do for six weeks? He was like, ‘Why don’t you come play Europe with me and we’ll play duets in little weird smoky nightclubs. That’s how Stockholm Syndrome was born. It sort of grew. The Gov’t Mule thing—Woody was a great friend of mine and when he passed away Warren knew that and knew that I shared a lot of sensibilities with Allen as a bass player. Warren called and said, ‘Come join us for this Memorial thing we’re doing in New York City. I said, ‘I’ll do whatever you want.’ He said, ‘We want you to play bass for Gov’t Mule.’ I said, ‘What?’

JC: We hung out for a few minutes at the Roseland that night. Do you remember that?

DS: Not really because I was really really nervous as hell. It was a situation where I did something to help out some friends. Warren called me and asked what I thought about doing a tour for a couple of months. I had the time off and I told him it sounded like fun. He goes, ‘How about if we have Chuck Leavell play keyboards?’ I was like, ‘How much can I learn in two weeks? Some of these opportunities were fun or they helped some people out.

JC: You had a lot of work to do…

DS: It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun. I really learned a lot. I love working with other people because every time I do I learn something that helps me as a musician, and in turn I can bring that back to Widespread Panic. Even when T Lavitz was in Widespread Panic I was always priming him for information. I don’t know anything about modes. What are these modes you speak of? What is this mode I hear Frank Zappa play? And he would do his best to show me, which is another great thing about having Jimmy Herring in the band. He’s a consummate learned musician. He’s probably the best teacher because he’s not a method teacher. He’s a practice teacher, by that I mean, he’s like, ‘Alright, here’s what the teacher is going to show you in the classroom. Does that make sense?’ And I say, ‘No Jimmy. It’s kind of confusing (laughs). Then he’d pick up his guitar and start playing chords. He’d say, ‘Okay, I’m gonna play this chord and you play this scale against it. That’s what I mean—then the light bulb goes off and I can hear what he’s trying to teach me. Then all of a sudden it makes sense. It’s out of the classroom into the front lounge of the bus. All these opportunities to work with these great players really served me well...
 

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