Back Home At Last
An Interview with Mark Karan
By Valerie Stevenson August 2002
Photos Courtesy of Alan Hess, Keir Bailey, Dave Clark, Chris Jones & Others....

This interview got off to a rockier start than the last few. I certainly didn’t feel as prepared as I’ve been in the past and this was the first time it was not just MK and I….even though others present were not ‘right’ there. MK was restringing a guitar as we began outside on the deck of his new home in Northern California, while others milled about in the house.  After a question or two all flowed as it has in past interviews. It became a conversation, rather than an interview….which is what makes it such a pleasure for me to interview Mark.   Kick back, get the beverage of your choice, spark one….and enjoy……

VS: Okay, first we’re going to talk about Ratdog. Tell us about the Ratdog Europe tour.   How were the crowds?

MK: [Big Laugh] That’s not kind. The crowds were tiny.

VS: Everywhere?

MK: Pretty much. The last date that we did was a festival in Germany and, because it was a festival, there were a lot of people there,.. but Ratdog’s European draw overall… the people that were there had a great time, we had a great time, but the draw was not great.

VS: So do you think the tour was successful?

MK: Yeah. I would say it was successful because everybody that came to the shows to my knowledge enjoyed the hell out of them… and we enjoyed the hell out of it and we’ve been invited back. In a crowd of 300, if half of those people bring their friends the next time you’ve got a crowd of 500. We went there to do grassroots promotion….basically, we went there to make new fans and hopefully that’s what we did.

VS: How were the venues there compared to here?

MK: It’s kind of hard to judge because I had a lot of gear problems, but I think it had much, much less to do with the actual venues and more to do with the fact that all of us attempted to bring too much of our own shit and attempted to get too much of our own thing happening gear wise and sound wise in another country… where they have a different electrical system and everything else. A lot of our shit just wasn’t working the way it’s supposed to….

VS: So hindsight being 20/20 how would you do it differently next time?

MK: I would just get gear from them you know like…

VS: …..Amps too?

MK: Oh yeah… mainly amps. you know, like, I’m not going to play any old guitar, but I would rent British gear or European gear or make damn sure that my U.S. gear was designed to operate on more than one type of electrical power system… because my amp was extremely unhappy and Weir’s amp blew up probably close to a dozen times.

VS: Wow….

MK: I had to play my guitar so hard because of the way my amp was acting that I broke at least one E string a night… usually at the peak of some solo where I really didn’t really need anything breaking [laugh] so.....you know......it was an interesting experience, but it was very cool.

VS: So did you have the same problems in Japan?

MK: No, it’s a completely different power system and I didn’t bring my amp to Japan. There is actually a Two-Rock Users Club in Japan so I was able to get hooked-up via Two-Rock… the people that actually make my amp. They put me together with the Two-Rock Club in Japan and they brought me an amp.

VS: That’s awesome. So what were the crowds like in Japan and how was that?

MK: Well the crowds….you use the word plural….and we only did one show….

VS: Okay….how was the crowd at the show?

MK: That was an interesting situation… this festival that we did, the Mount Fuji Jazz Festival… I really have no idea where the jazz came in because Peter Frampton and Tower of Power came on after us so……love both of those bands…..but JAZZ???? [laughs] Crowd wise it was not that big either. They said that it was the second biggest after the New Orleans Jazz Festival….it was definitely not that. Maybe 2,000-3,000 people were there during our set. Before ours, it was a bunch of straighter looking sort of polite folk and about five minutes before we went on there was this sudden inundation of long black hair and little black beards and tie-dyes and all of a sudden there were all of these Japanese hippies that we hadn’t seen on the whole trip… we’d never seen. We didn’t see any hippies anywhere and all of a sudden, for our set, there were tons of them. Within about five minutes of the set being over, they were all gone and the audience looked all straight again. I don’t know where they came from, I don’t know where they went ….it was like a bunch of elves into the Elvinwood or something, it was really bizarre.

VS: That’s really cool. So you have a fan base there….clearly.

MK: Small, but yah it was there.

VS: O [big laugh] Kay…… Did you get to spend any time at all in Japan? I know you didn’t really get to spend any time really in Europe going around.

MK: Actually we spent quite a bit more time in Europe than I got to spend in Japan.

VS: What did you get to do there?

MK: We had a day off in Cologne. That was awesome. Oddly enough, the day that we got to Cologne, it turned out to be Cologne’s Gay Pride Day….so we had thousands and thousands of German and international gays parading around our hotel, which was right on this plaza and there were all sorts of bands and floats and that was all kinda fun… seeing what that world was about and doing a little tourist shopping there. We got to kick around Amsterdam a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit. Paris was a joke. Paris we saw for moments and London was the same. London we checked into a hotel in the afternoon and I got a curry at a curry house that was right next to the hotel and then it was time for the sound check and we didn’t stay the night. There were a lot of those, but we got to hang out in Wales and a few of the other places we went we got to kick around a little bit….

VS: So Ratdog will continue to take journeys outside of the states?

MK: If we’re invited…if management deems it fit.

VS: What was your favorite Ratdog venue this summer?

MK: I didn’t have one….they’re basically all the same to me….

VS: It’s like that Jackson Browne song……

MK: ….what??

VS: You know that one where every town’s the same……

MK: Yeah….it’s true…..especially nowadays where every town has a Miller’s Outpost and a Starbuck’s and an Old Navy and they’re all the same. It used to be that you’d go to different towns around the country and they all had their own little mom and pop version of whatever the local sundry store was or notion store or whatever, you know, and they had their own department stores and their own restaurants that were unique to that area and now you go everywhere and it’s corporate America even in Europe…..McDonald’s & Burger King everywhere you go.

VS: At the spoken word tent at Alpine, Bob said that there are 4 new live albums in the works: the Slim's run in CA and possibly a new Ratdog album….

MK: I have no idea. There has definitely been interest from the band in doing that, but quite often what the band is interested in, doesn’t come to pass. we just roll with it…

VS: Tell us about the picture on your amp of your dog? People don’t know it’s your dog.

MK: Well… it’s my dog [laughs]….

VS: It’s his birthday today…

MK: Yes it is.  He’s 14 today, that’s 98 in dog years.

VS: What does he want for his birthday?

MK: Probably some dawg pussy, but he got snipped when he was young so… [laughs…..and a WOOF, WOOF, WOOF from the other room].  He’s on there because I thought it was an adorable picture. I miss him because I’m hardly ever home and he’s gonna pass on one of these days… so I like to keep him with me.

VS: What do you see as the main difference between Ratdog now and two years ago?

MK: From within the band or perceptually?

VS: Both.

MK: From within the band I would say that the difference is that we as a band have a stronger sense of self. I think we’ve become more of a band and we have taken to a bit more of a “fine, well fuck you” stance to all the nay sayers and people that find it necessary to heap negativity out into the world as opposed to making a space for everybody to be. I think Ratdog has accepted that it is what it is and that we love what it is no matter how anybody else feels about it. So in that sense it’s a good thing and I think that that’s brought us all together more musically. Kenny and I were working really well together initially and then we got into a space where we weren’t really paying much attention to one another and just sort of playing all over each other. In the past six months we’ve kind of reconnected musically and there’s a bit more thought and focus on how the two lead instruments are working together. We’re more focused… and maybe a little less afraid of being a rock ‘n roll band. Certainly we’ve been jamming a lot more and taking the jams to some pretty interesting places that have some sort of musical validity or depth to them, as opposed to just being noodle fests…

VS: …cohesive flow as opposed to endless meandering….

MK: …but I think that even noodle fests can sometimes have a good cohesive flow to them.  I think that there’s more thematic stuff going on with Ratdog now and I also think that I’m a little less afraid to be a rock guitar player since that’s what my background is and not trying as hard to be mister trippy jazzy boy and just doing what I do and the jazz guys are doing what it is that they do and what’s coming out of that is a genuine blend of musical styles, a real potpourris or whatever you want to call it, of all of our varied influences… and the influences in the band are really varied so there’s potentially a lot of depth there. As far as outside the band, I think the perception has gotten better. Enough people have come out to see the band to where the word is out in the community that Ratdog is not the band that it was in 1996….

VS: …right….

MK: …..that maybe it’s time for people that had officially written the band off according to what they saw back in ’96 or so to get up off their duffs and come out and see the band because it ain’t the same band and it’s a good band.

VS: Do you think that you’re picking up some more jazz influence from the jazz guys?

MK: I think that’s almost unavoidable. We’re all learning from one another and getting influenced by each other both in terms of questions we’re able to ask each other at sound checks and rehearsals about…..hey…what was that…show me that….to just the unspoken communication that comes from playing music together to the variety of music that we listen to of one another’s. Kenny will put on some jazz CD that I would probably not have gone out and found if he hadn’t turned me on to it. DJ Logic turned all of us on to this new CD by this group or project call Jazzanova. It’s nothing I would have even touched, if he hadn’t turned us on to it, but he played it on the bus one day and I got on Amazon the next day and ordered it.

VS: So what’s it like having him in the band?

MK: I feel like it’s still working itself out. He’s not really ‘in the band’ per se, he’s got too much on his plate already as an individual to really want to step into any defined band… and we don’t play with him with the same continuity that we play with each other….so I think it’s going to take longer to incorporate him fully into the music. My sense is that when we do the funkier, groove oriented stuff.....when we do The Music Never Stops and Shakedown… maybe some of the more textural stuff like Even So or some of the Ratdog original stuff that’s more textural… he fits in great and has some awesome additions to make. I don’t feel that we’ve found the sweet spot for his participation in songs like Tennessee Jed or Brown Eyed Women or the more sort of folksy traditional country or rock influenced stuff that’s more melody based and less groove oriented…. but we’re exploring…

VS: …..I totally agree….

MK: I think he’s still searching a bit.

VS: In the beginning when you guys first played together on the  “So Many Roads” tour, he would sit in for just a few songs. then when he joined you on the Ratdog Fall Tour in 2001 he was playing on almost every song. Now he’s playing more on select songs….

MK: .....yeah, which makes more sense. He’s invited along as a Guest, a revered Guest, but a Guest… and, I can’t speak for the whole band… but my sense is that it makes sense just to feature him where he will be best used….

VS: ….Yah….

MK: …and to not necessarily have him on the stuff where he wouldn’t be best suited. It’s like….the other day I did some sit-ins at a local festival and, while it was fun doing the sitting in, the material chosen wasn’t necessarily material that I felt made best use of what it is that I bring to the party.  It’s just another example of that thing.  If you’re going to bring someone in from outside your personal fold, there’s a lot to be said for taking a good solid look at what that person does and where that will be best showcased in the context of what you do.

VS: You sat-in with the Flying Other Brothers at Marin Music Festival and you’re sitting in with them again next week at Studio Z…..do you think you’re going to examine that?

MK: What do you mean by examine that?

VS: Examine what you just said….where you would best fit in?

MK: I don’t have much choice with regards to this thing I’m doing with the Flying Other Brothers. They weren’t going to be able to do a show because their guitar player wasn’t available and so that night I will be their lead guitar player… and so I guess appropriate or not, I’ll be peeing all over their music!!!!

VS: [Big laughs]……..okay………let’s skip ahead since we’re kind of already in that context….will we see any impromptu MK solo gigs now that you’re living up here?

MK: I have no idea. First of all define impromptu MK solo gigs….

VS: ….with just you playing and you singing and not a band…

MK No, that’s not something I do.

VS: Okay [laughs]….okay on to Puddleduck… Last year we saw Jemimah Puddleduck morph into Ratdog at Sweetwater in Mill Valley, CA. What was that like?

MK: It was great having all of the guys sit-in. Frankly though, my preference would be to have them sit-in one at a time in the context of Puddleduck.  I play with Ratdog all the time.  I don’t need to play more with Ratdog… and the people that come out to see Puddleduck… I think the vast majority of them also see Ratdog when we play, so they don’t need to see Ratdog more either. Puddleduck is something separate from and different from Ratdog. It’s not like I didn’t enjoy it, but with Puddleduck, it’s not my priority. I would rather… if the boys were going to come down and wanted to play, I would much rather Rob sat in and played a couple of tunes with Jemimah Puddleduck or Bob sat in and sang a couple of tunes with Jemimah Puddleduck or Jay sat in and drummed a couple of tunes with JP… that’s more my level of interest in anybody… whether it’s Ratdog or someone else… sitting in.  My interest is more in bringing an alternate spice to an existing stew rather than trying to turn an existing stew into an entirely different meal….

VS: …..and that wasn’t actually the plan that just kind of happened….

MK: …it just kind of naturally morphed, but yeah….I think if and when the opportunity arises again, I’m going to keep a little bit firmer hand on bringing guys up one or two at a time as opposed to let’s one at a time get the guys off stage from Puddleduck and replace them with the Ratdog guys.

VS: Any future plans for Puddleduck now that you’re up here in the Bay Area?

MK: Puddleduck has pretty much turned into myself and Bob Gross.  Beyond that… we love playing with Scott as a drummer, but living in L.A. and what-not, he’s not going to be as available as I would like to make the band available so we'll probably look at alternates for when he's not available... and John Thomas from Hornsby’s group is our first choice keyboard player. He loves the band and we love him, but with his Hornsby commitments, he’s often not available.  We recently met and played with a wonderful San Francisco guy on keys named Ben Jacobs. He should be able to do quite a few more dates than JT might be available for.  The band as it sits is really me and Bob Gross as a constant... with those guys as kind of the first call guys.  I’m doing the best that I can to meet players in the bay area, as opposed to the guys that I know from years and years of living in L.A., so that I can have a string of people that I can play with locally, more on the spur of the moment with less planning, with less travel up from Los Angeles making or breaking whether or not a show can happen. So, as far as the new plans for Puddleduck, I guess it’s going to be new members, new jamming scenarios…. I’m going to try to get some writing done, although I’ve been touring so much with Ratdog that I find that to be somewhat difficult just to find the mental and emotional space to do it. I’m building a studio in my new home here in Northern California and when that gets done, my focus will be on a studio record. I’m not sure if it’s going to be a Puddleduck record or if it’s going to be a Mark Karan record, I’m still toying with all that….

VS: and still writing stuff for it….

MK: I haven’t written shit. I’ve got old stuff that we’ve been doing with the Puddleduck, I’ve got some other old stuff that I’ve written. I’ve got scads and scads of stuff written by friends and acquaintances that I’m going to mine for material. I don’t really have an ego involvement with being ‘the writer’.

VS: ….so should I submit stuff to you that Tasha’s written? She’s written about half a dozen songs…..[laughs]….

MK: How’s her ego?

VS: How’s her ego…..what do you mean?

MK: How’s she going to feel if she gets rejected?

VS: I think her ego’s fine…..

MK: ….well alright then….

VS: I think her ego’s kinda like mine…..well fuck you then…..I don’t care….I’ll find somebody else!!!!!! [laughs]

MK: That’s my sense about anybody that I look at material from music wise….is basically I don’t want to look at material if the writers of the material aren’t comfortable with the fact that, as the person delivering it, I need to be comfortable with what I’m delivering… that I need to be able to make changes in, it if it’s going to suit me or whatever… that the song is in a mutable state….

VS: ….a work in progress…

MK: ….to some degree. I wouldn’t ask for writer’s credit or any of that kind of crap, I don’t want publishing, but if a line in a song bothers me and I’m unable to sing it, I’m going to re-work it and make it into something I can sing. Bobby has the same scenario when he’s writing with Barlow or Garrett or whatever. They might have some line that they think is absolutely stunning and great and fight him tooth and nail to keep it in the song, but the fact is that he’s the man that has to sing it and he has to be able to believe in what he’s singing or he can’t sing it with any conviction… and I feel the same way.

VS: So does that mean you’re actively soliciting for songs?

MK: Always… constantly.

VS: Puddleduck is playing in Denver, any other plans to go any other places? People want you on the east coast really bad.

MK: Sadly I think I have to tell the people on the East Coast they’ve got quite a bit of a wait ahead of them. I’m so busy with Ratdog touring and, when I do get home, the last thing in the world I want to do is tour some more. Also, there are financial restrictions that are placed on us by the fact that Jemimah Puddleduck is a pretty unknown band and therefore the kind of offers we get are too small to cover expenses. When you stack all of that up and you try to figure out plane flights, travel expenses, the expenses of either shipping gear or renting gear back east, the hotels, etc., rental cars or tour bus… if you’re going to do that… it’s just cost prohibitive. I would love to see it happen, but it’s expensive and, sadly, I think a lot of the fans don’t really know about the inner workings of tour and what kind of expenses are involved and that kind of stuff and they think that somehow they’re being dissed or it’s a lack of desire on our part to go there.  It’s really got nothing to do with that. We would love to get out to the east coast, we just can’t afford it. 

VS: So you’re actively soliciting for higher offers on the east coast? [laughs]

MK: Of course. One of the ways that people do things is....if you get a really great paying festival gig or something that more or less pays for you getting out there, then you can take half a dozen local club or small venue gigs and actually keep the money from those which makes it cost efficient. The other problem though is that on a couple of occasions we’ve actually had stuff booked to go back east or go into the deep south and every time Puddleduck has booked a tour, Ratdog always seems to wind up with dates right in the middle of that tour and we wind up having to cancel. I do know that I want to get Puddleduck out there, so it’ll get worked out one way or another.

VS: On to The Other Ones. Will The Other Ones touring impact Ratdog touring? Do you think that’s going to continue?

MK: I have no idea. If you want to interview management, they could probably answer those questions.

VS: Somebody wants to know why The Other Ones didn’t have the best guitar player alive this time?

MK: The best guitar alive… hmmmm… I think Amos Garret was busy. [laughs]

VS: You recently moved back up to the Bay Area and I know you haven’t had much time here, but how does it feel to be ‘back home again?’

MK: It feels great and I wish I could have some time to spend here. This couple of weeks break is a nice thing. Frankly, disappointed as I was not to be invited into The Other Ones, I’m looking forward to the down time while they’re busy doing their fall/winter thing. It’s going to give me a couple of months to get settled into my home and start working on my record and stuff like that.

VS: So have you gotten any new gear or toys to play with in the last year?

MK: Oh Christ! [laughs] yeah, I got a bunch of new stuff, how much interest is there out there in what kind of stuff I’m actually using?

VS: I think there’s a lot of interest.

MK: Really?

VS: Yes.

MK: Well, let’s see. I know we did an interview where I talked about the Two Rock Amp…

VS: …yes…

MK: Well I have another one and it’s a different design that they also made, so now I have 2 Two Rock Amps. 

VS: What’s the difference?

MK: It’s a different design. The first one was an amp that they designed and called their wireless amp. In the production run it became the Opal, but the Opal is different. It’s my favorite amp on the planet. They call it the wireless amp because they put all of the components basically right in the middle of the damn thing and used the shortest wire runs they could possibly run to wire everything together… so it’s a very responsive, very immediate amplifier. The other one is actually a tone clone of Kimock’s Dumble amp. He uses Dumbles and Two Rocks. They worked with Steve and basically cloned his favorite Dumble… but Dumbles go for $10,000 and Two Rocks go for less than half of that… so I got one of those, I got some more speaker cabinets done up, some new stomp boxes…there's a guy that has a company called Menatone and he is doing the JAC which is a little compressor stomp box which is ridiculous, awesome and designed to mimic the response of an LA-2A. Dave Freidman made a nice little boost pedal for me as well as upgrading my touring rack. I found a 1951 Fender “Nocaster” when we were touring in Seattle. I’m slowly but surely stepping into the realm of having “real deal” vintage guitars as opposed to the “players” that I’ve always had in the past. I’m buying players, I’m still buying refins and refrets and all that kind of stuff, but now I have an honest to god ’62 Strat and an honest to god ’51 Nocaster and that’s pretty fun too.

VS: How many guitars do you usually bring with you?

MK: On Ratdog tour?

VS: Yah.

MK: Half a dozen or so.

VS: How do you pick which ones you bring?

MK: There are just ones that over the course of time have turned out to be the ones that seem to feel and sound the best in that particular arena. I’ve got about 30 guitars, but there are really only about half a dozen or so that seem to work well with Ratdog.

VS: So do you pick different ones for Puddleduck?

MK: Sometimes. It just sort of depends on what mood I’m in. It’s a funny thing because a different guitar will make me play differently. I could play the same song on the same night with a different guitar in my hands and I’m going to have a completely different approach to the song depending on what guitar it is. A lot of times, especially on a Puddleduck run, I’ll pick guitars according to what mood I’m in… what direction I think the music might take, or what direction I think I might want to sort of lean the music in. A Tele will make me play sort of more chicken pickin’… country-ish, rootsy playing, the Strat tends to pull me in the Jerry direction because a lot of my early Jerry passion was from the era when he was using Strats… same with the Les Paul or the SG… pulls me into a sort of a combination of years and years of listening to Clapton and Allman who were Gibson guys and also my early years of listening to Jerry, ’67, ’68, ’69 Jerry was all Gibson. Then I’ve got jazz boxes and I’ve got the Gretch and stuff like that. I adore those big box guitars, but they’re not really that appropriate for Ratdog… but for more blues oriented stuff… or the Gretch is just great for textural things. I’ve done a lot of bands that were more sort of alterna-pop singer/songwriter stuff, parts-y stuff, Beatle influenced stuff, sonic sculpture oriented stuff and the Gretch is fabulous for that…

VS: …but you used to play the Gretch with Ratdog…

MK: …pretty rarely….I used to once in a while, but it’s pretty rare that I use it anymore.

VS: Well that’s pretty much it, unless you have anything else you want to cover.

MK: Not really. I hear Phish is going back out on the road this year….

VS: …I’ve heard that too. Do you think that will impact you?

MK: I think it’s bound to, however, I don’t have anything against Phish at all and I want to go on record as saying that. By the same token, I do have some problems with some what happened to the tour scene and the lot scene during Phish’s heyday… where the drugs and the party seemed to shift around to where that took precedence over the music and the experience and the community of touring… to where you started seeing people staying out in the parking lot, getting loaded on Heroin and Nitrous and leaving saying they had this fabulous time at this show… that they don’t even remember… that they couldn’t possibly have heard what music they were listening to because it was so garbled up in their brain with everything else that was going on….it seems to me that it used to be that drugs on tour were more…..

VS: ….an accent…

MK: …they were the spice, not the meal…

VS: …right…

MK: …..and I think that the kids that were going to see Phish got more into the party and the drugs than the music itself, possibly because, and this is just my opinion, but I don’t think that Phish’s songs had the same….

VS: ….depth…

MK: …yeah, depth, the same sort of bard characteristic… the story telling of a generation… the way the Grateful Dead’s songs were. If the Phish experience was supposed to be the Grateful Dead experience of the millennium, I think they missed the boat in their song writing.   I think the vibe is cool, it’s great having kids out on tour, that’s awesome and I’m sure all the Phish guys are great and their songs are fun…I don’t get that there’s a whole lot of depth and I think some of that depth and story telling  is what created the community that surrounded the Grateful Dead. So Phish coming back on the road, I think will have an impact…a lot of those kids to whom the party is what’s most important will go jump back on Phish tour. To be perfectly honest, while it may impact us in terms of lesser ticket sales, I think that it will impact us in a positive way in terms of the kind of parking lot and the kind of scene that will in turn be following Ratdog because a lot of the kids that don’t like the darkness on the Phish lot will turn to String Cheese and Ratdog for a lighter, more playful and perhaps more spiritual venue.

VS: Well in the end, certainly the last five years of Dead tour for a lot of people it was the same as the Phish tour where the drug thing became and the parking lot scene became…..

MK: Absolutely… and part of that is the bigness of it and I’m sure I’m speaking predominantly for myself in Ratdog-land, but it’s one of the reasons that I, personally, don’t particularly like the idea of Ratdog getting more popular and thereby playing bigger venues.   There’s less money to be made and more hassle, but frankly I would rather stay in the 1,500-3,000 seat venues and do multiple nights where necessary to keep the crowd sort of mellower, artier, friendlier and smaller. I think it’s the numbers…once the Grateful Dead started drawing 100,000 kids….

VS: ….you can’t control the scene….

MK: …you can’t control the scene and there were probably only 20,000 of those kids, if that, that really got it .... my Dead Head years were from 1966 to about 1975… so I truthfully don’t have much idea what went on between 1975 to 1995 when “Papa” died.

VS: When Phish got big, Dead Heads went on Phish tour and when Jerry died a lot of them went to Phish tour. Part of it was all those people that hung out in the parking lot and never even went into the shows......

MK: .....that’s the thing… and frankly one of the things that has always frustrated me about Dead Heads in general is their lack of ability to be as inclusive and embracing of all things… and of the bigger picture… as their heroes, The Grateful Dead, actually were. Nothing frustrates me more than to talk to a Dead Head who can flat out say something like: “I hate country music.” [laughs] I scratch my head… so, Mama Tried, Bertha, Big Iron, Me & My Uncle, Cumberland and the list goes on and on and on of stuff that’s absolutely pure and simple nothing but country music that this same person adores because the Grateful Dead played it… yet the version by the original artist that the Dead loved enough to cover in the first place… sucks?

VS: …I know….

MK: Mama Tried is a Merle Haggard song, Big Iron is a Marty Robbins song, El Paso is a Marty Robbins song….these are not Grateful Dead songs, these are country songs that the Grateful Dead loved so much that they wanted to do them. What those Dead Heads need to realize is that there’s real value in saying “I love the Grateful Dead’s version, can I learn anything by going back and listening to what inspired them to do it?"

VS: We’ll keep working on that one….[laughs]

MK: Hey Dead Heads… psychedelics are supposed to open your mind, not close it [Big Laughs]

VS: Well that’s a good closing point…

The following are some post-interview questions:

VS: Tell us about the Ratdog rehearsal process?

MK: Ratdog? Rehearsal? Huh??? No, actually it's pretty organic. We get together and someone will suggest a new GD tune to learn or bring up something we need to work on and we just do it... or we just jam and stretch... lookin' for new tunes. It's pretty relaxed...

VS: How do you guys go about working up an old chestnut from the GD catalogue for Ratdog?

MK: One of us will suggest a tune or Bob will have something in mind... and we jam... and we listen... and we jam some more...

VS: Three years ago you told me it was your dream to sit-in with Little Feat.  You played with them at the Mystic in Petaluma last week (8/22/2002).  What was it like for your dream to become reality?

MK: That was a BLAST! Stephen Bruton was there as well, along with Norton Buffalo... we played Dixie Chicken at the end of the night and it was a MUSIC fest for 30 minutes! Too much fun!

VS Commentary: An understatement to say the least....this was one of the most amazing nights of music I've had the pleasure of melting to in some time.  Thanks Dave for keeping me standing.  It was an evening of heart melting, knee weakening music.  This is a combination that I hope we'll see again and again .....schedules permitting....DUH!!!!  It took three years to get these guys together.....in the same place at the same time....their paths have crossed so many times.....within hours at festivals, venues and towns over the last three years....so to finally witness this 'oh so perfect' musical connection happen was bliss beyond description.

Bill Payne: Val, was a great evening of fun. Had a great night last night.  Mucho fun. Thanks again for your help in putting Mark with us.  Mark, many thanks for being there tonight.  We'll have to do it again sometime.