WALSTIB Productions Presents:
An Intimate Look Into Mark Karan's World
Interview by Valerie Stevenson - October 2000

With only a short break after a nationwide tour with The Other Ones on Furthur 2000, Mark Karan is back in the studio rehearsing with Ratdog for their upcoming fall tour showcasing the recent release of their new CD, "Evening Moods."  We sat down to talk about The Other Ones, Ratdog & Jemimah Puddleduck.  The planned interview quickly turned into a very candid conversation and a glimpse into Mark Karan, both the person and the musician, bringing you a unique insight into both his world and the post-Grateful Dead world today.

The Other Ones

VS: How was the tour from your perspective and which shows stood out?

 MK: How was the tour from my perspective is a bit of a complicated question because musically I thought it was wonderful.  We had a blast. I felt like Steve and I found a much better groove than we found in 1998.  As much as I like Dave's playing, having one less soloist on the stage really helped the situation.  I like a lot of the tunes that we pulled out.  I loved doing He’s Gone. Stuff like that is really a thrill and, obviously, I like being able to sing.

I was really disappointed in the attendance, given that it had been two years and given that this was, in my eyes at least, a pretty special event, it was pretty weak attendance overall.

VS: Why do you think the attendance was weak?

MK: I think it’s a lot of factors.  One of the factors is that it was really late in the season and I a lot of people were back in school.   Phish was on tour at the same time and whether you like or don’t like Phish, the fact of the matter is that they’re drawing on a lot of the same people. Phil wasn’t there, which for some people was obviously a concern... the routing... the way the gigs were chosen was so that the tour would be successful in terms of being a financial success, but sometimes the end result of that is that the routing  was set-up so that really it was very difficult, if not impossible, to follow the tour so that kind of killed a lot of the enthusiasm for the people that normally go for the whole tour as opposed to just a show or two.

VS: Even for the vendors it was near impossible for them to make every show.  Many of them split into two and tag teamed the gigs.

You did lead vocals on the acoustic version of Deal, when are we going to hear you let loose on some electric blues songs with The Other Ones?

MK: I think Johnny Mathis put it best when he said [MK singing]: “It’s Not For Me To Say.”

VS: Can you talk about the difference between the 1998 Other Ones line-up and the 2000 line-up and how it impacted the direction of the music and the songs played?

MK: The differences are pretty obvious: no saxophone and Phil.  There were two major impacts.  As wonderful as Alphonso is on bass, and I really think he’s an amazing bassist and he added a lot to this tour, but he doesn’t know these songs, even with his experience in Jazz Is Dead and he doesn’t have a long history or background in this kind of music and this approach to jamming.  He’s more of a jazz guy, which is awesome, but it isn’t the same thing…..so when Phil was there, the foundation was more Grateful Dead flavored.  I’m not saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing, it was just more Grateful Dead flavored. This was different, although having Billy instead of Molo also pulled out a certain Grateful Deadness in the groove.  The biggest difference for me was that there were fewer soloists so there was more musical space.  Also, Steve and I traveled together the whole tour on the same bus talking about music, swapping ideas, getting together before the shows and looking at set lists and saying: “Well how about you play here, and  I’ll play here.”  Overall I felt like the two guitar thing worked better in 2000 than it did in 1998.

VS: For the shows that I saw, it definitely did. 

MK: Overall there was better communication and less notes.

VS: Many would like to see the return of the two set show by The Other Ones.  How does the band feel about one vs. two sets?

MK: I don’t think that anyone in the band is all that interested in giving everybody a beer break [laugh…laugh….]

VS: Shopping break…..

MK: I know that the vendors would like it for that reason and I respect that, but I think that the idea of doing everything at once is so that the show can actually progress.  Stopping in the middle essentially means that you’re doing two shows because you get a certain amount of momentum and then you have to actually stop and go away from it and not that I’m against that…..I spent a lot of years in bands that did 3-4 sets per night in bars and essentially when you’re doing that you’re doing 3-4 shows a night even though it’s all the same people and what not. I like the momentum. I like having a longer amount of time in which to create the canvas that becomes the show as a whole.

VS: How did you and the band feel about performing on TV and how did the environment of the studio impact your performance?

MK: I can’t speak for anybody else in the band. I know how I felt about it and I know what my opinions are on that and for me, I thought it was a little bit of a joke.  For one thing, they had us do three songs ostensibly because they were going to air the other two on different nights, which, to the best of my knowledge, they never did air the other two. The song that they chose was Ripple and was probably the least representative of what it is that we actually do because it was so concise.  We did China Cat and we had to do a really concise version because it had to be under 4 minutes and we did Truckin’ with the same rules.  How do you take a Grateful Dead oriented band and tell them to fit a song that’s normally 15 minutes into 4 minutes?  [laugh…..laugh….]  It’s silly. I understand the motivation behind it. It’s not a bad idea to expose the band to the television audience, but I don’t think that the way that it was handled is going to expose the band in any kind of a way that really serves it anyway. Ultimately, give us a ten minute slot and let us play one song.

VS: What is your role as one of three guitarists?  Is there any pressure for you to fill a particular role?

MK: The roles are pretty undefined.  Bob traditionally is the rhythm guitarist, but he steps up and does solos occasionally now and really enjoys it, especially slide.  I have my take on the split between Steve and I.  Our roles are that we are both lead guitarists.  One difference is that I’m singing and he’s not.  Steve is more of a consummate "musician" than I am from purely the perspective of really knowing all the finessey ins and outs of the guitar.  He always has a guitar in his hands.  He’s always, always playing.  I’m passionate about my music and I’m passionate about guitar, but not in the same way….

VS: When I interviewed him two years ago he played the whole time.

MK: Well that’s Steve.  The whole time he was on the bus, he never put his guitar down.  That’s not me.  I have a passionate love affair with the guitar.  It’s been my love since I was nine, I knew what I wanted to do was play guitar and sing, but therein lies a big difference.  Because I’m a singer... because I’m a songwriter along those lines... I have a different approach musically My focus hasn’t been quite so much purely based in musicianship. It’s been really, really about the song.  I’ve only recently, since I’ve started doing The Other Ones and what-not, gotten re-interested in really expanding my abilities and my understanding about the instrument itself because when you’re doing an 8 bar solo or a 16 bar solo and you’re doing basically blues or rock format, you don’t have to be a genius.  There is a certain amount of skill and knowledge that you need to achieve and once you’ve achieved that it’s really just about being creative with those tools.  Now I find that I’m much more interested in really exploring and expanding my knowledge and in that sense the last two years have been wonderful and the 7-8 weeks that I spent with The Other Ones this time was really great because Steve and I spent an enormous amount of time together and I was frankly able to pick the shit out of his brain [laugh….laugh….]

VS: How are your guitars miked (direct line and microphone on your cabinet)?

MK: With which band?

VS: All…

MK: Different… with The Other Ones I was using two amplifiers that were individually miked, one was a Fender Super Reverb from the 60s that was a little bit of a cleaner, warm Fendery kind of tone with a little bit more of a top end to it and the other is a Matchless which is sort of a Vox  type design and it’s a little more distorted and edgy sounding.  The idea being that with the same guitar signal going to the two different amps, the soundman out front can mix and blend how much of a cleaner sound versus how much of a distorted sound made an overall pleasing guitar tone and those are miked on the cabinets.

With Ratdog I use Line 6 equipment which is digital as opposed to the old tube stuff and they do a process called digital modeling which via an interesting… it’s sort of like taking sonic pictures of the sound. They’ll take numerous characteristics of the classic old amplifiers and put them into what they call a digital model so you have a digital amplifier that sounds and responds very similarly to an old tube amp, but because it’s digital, because it’s modeling, I’ve got 16 different amps available in this one amplifier.  I can send a mike level signal right off of the back of the amp so there doesn’t have to be another live mike on the stage.  The soundman will have a consistent level from me to mix with whereas I can turn my guitar amp on stage up and down to please me and to give me whatever it is I need to hear without messing with him.

They are two very different approaches.  Ratdog is a little more dependant on the in-ear monitors so it’s a little bit more imperative that we have a lower stage volume.  With The Other Ones, I knew that Steve was going to be using his Dumbles and I knew it was going to be louder on stage and, quite frankly, given the choice, I like the sound of the tube amps better.  They are not as versatile or reliable, but they’re the real deal.

VS: …..the same as digital sound, do you lose part of the top end?

MK: Well…..I don’t know that you lose part of the top end, the top end character is definitely different…the sonic character is as good as it can be with where the technology is at now, but it’s like the difference between listening to a CD and listening to a vinyl LP and on the other hand listen to a 24 bit 96k audio DVD and it’s pretty scary….they’ve got it down.  The problem with CDs is that they’re 16 bit, 44.1k sampling rate, so you’re missing a lot of the sound on a CD.

VS: How do you feel about the fans that you are meeting around the country?  Are there differences in the regions in terms of how the crowds express themselves?

MK: How I feel about the fans… I’m lovin’ it.  It’s a pretty amazing family to be welcomed into over the course of the last couple of years with an amazing history that actually is a lot of my history, even though I wound up taking a lot of left turns before I came back around to it….so I love that, it’s exciting.  I get recognized on the lot just enough to be fun, it’s not so much that it’s a pain in the butt.  I’ve met some really nice people that I’ve stayed in touch with, I’ve met some really sweet girls.

It’s been a great experience and YES there is a definite difference region to region.  I noticed that… and this is a blanket statement…and I don’t like blanket or generalized statements because there’s always an exception to every rule, but, in general, I would say that the west coast audiences are more jaded and also effectively more laid back and somewhat possibly even low energy… even though they’re really appreciating it, they tend to sit and appreciate it.  Whereas the East Coast audiences seem a little more starved for the music and really enthusiastic when it comes to them, they scream and shout and jump up and down and dance frantically and have a blast and from the perspective of the band, frankly, the more energy that the audience puts into it, the more energy they get back...  It’s a synergistic thing and the more energy we’re going to, in turn, create for them.  So, in a way the fact that the West Coast had the Dead for as long as they had the Dead and they’ve seen so many shows, and they are, at least to some degree, jaded doesn’t serve them in the big picture because they’re not giving us back as much juice so the synergistic effect is lessened.

VS: You can just soak the energy up in New York…..

MK: ….yah and they send it back up to us and then it’s like we can double what we’re sending out there….they’re giving us more juice to work with…..

VS: that’s why the Garden shows were the best shows every year, without a doubt….every year…no question…..

Okay….this is a two part question: After ingesting some veggies, my wife thought Mark was Bonnie Raitt at one of The Other Ones gigs  [BIG LAUGHS….]

Who does your hair?  [BIGGER LAUGHS]

MK: Oh my god……. [Southern Drawl] God does my hair, I haven’t cut it in a year….

VS: What is your take on how the bad publicity from the Hampton show affects the scene?  (City Council wishing to ban The Other Ones from the Hampton Coliseum because a girl OD’d on heroin and another fan assaulted an officer).

MK: I haven’t been following all of that….I assume you’re meaning the bottle throwing at cops and what not there…..

VS: Yes and the girl that OD’d.  It’s being said that they do not want The Other Ones to come back to the Hampton Coliseum.

MK: That’s plausible, I don’t know.  Truthfully for all that it has a great deal of Grateful Dead history and all that, the place sounds like crap anyway [laughter…] so if we didn’t go back there, it wouldn’t break my heart. It was probably the single worst sounding venue out of everywhere we played...

VS: Really...

MK: Yeah… just enormous amounts of echo in that place, obscene… don’t know how the sound people worked with it, but as far as what happened….there is a shift occurring in the scene that I see and it saddens me because I’m 45 years old and I was around as a kid for the ’66, ’67, ’68,  ’69… when all of that originated and it originated from not just some sort of party perspective.  There was an entire social experiment that was going on and a spiritual orientation that was going on.  People were discovering eastern philosophy, people were eating lots of L, but they were eating it because they wanted to blow their minds, not because they wanted to ‘get fucked up and party.’  The idea, at least in my circle of friends, of mixing alcohol and LSD was like ‘HUH?!’  That’s not to say we had anything against drinking once in a while, but you don’t mix the two… it’s like oil and water, they go to two very different places.  I know that I’ll probably get a lot of flack for this, but I strongly disapprove of Nitrous Oxide, I’m not a big fan of Ecstasy and I see both of those drugs becoming extremely prevalent in the lot scene.  I’m all about smoking a big fat bud or taking some really clean psychedelics and I’m all about the social scene around the music and the social scene around touring, but also the consciousness raising that the scene originated out of.  It’s becoming harder to find.  The older Dead Heads aren’t around to help the young kids touring today and show them the way; and a lot of them are either coming from the Phish scene or they’re sharing back and forth between the Phish scene and the Grateful Dead scene and the Phish scene seems to be a little more straight up about the party.  You know it seems to be about: ‘Hey dude, let’s get wasted’ and swinging drugs in the parking lot as opposed to… well, how many of these kids don’t even go into the shows?  They go on tour to hang out in the parking lot….

VS: .....at the Phish shows…..

MK: .....yeah, they don’t even give a shit about the music, they’re there to swing drugs and T-shirts….

VS: .....that’s how it was in the Dead scene in the end.

MK: That might well be, but I wasn’t around. I stopped being in the Dead scene in ’76 or so.  My last experiences of Dead shows were very much family shows, good vibes, everybody helping each other out, everybody concerned for everybody else, a type and quality of drugs that was conducive to gentle and creative behavior as opposed to rowdy and often dark behavior.  You get people that are getting drunk and fucked up and it doesn’t really surprise me that they throw a bottle at some cop.  It’s bad juju...

VS: It was like that the last 5-7 years of the Dead scene and, frankly, I was ashamed to be associated with it.

MK: Well the difference though... and I think it’s a huge difference... is that that influence may have been occurring in the last 5-7 years of the Dead scene, but from what I understand, even from you, because it was still the Dead and because Jerry was still there, the older Dead Heads were still there and they were going up to the kids that were fucking up and going: ‘Hey little brother, hey little sister...that’s just not the way, let me show you a different way to be…’

VS: Right, but it got so big that you couldn’t impact the scene, no matter how much you did that.  When they’re playing in a place that held 100,000 people and 25,000 are misbehaving 300 of us can not impact...

MK: .....and that’s sad. that’s part of what happened to the whole thing, I guess after Touch of Grey.

VS: Yes…

MK: They hit a more mainstream market, then it became groovy to dress up like a hippie and go see the Grateful Dead.  I don’t think that those people really 'got it'. I don’t think they ever really got it... got what it was about, where it came from, and I think that a lot of the kids, even the kids that are on tour now that are... god I hate the word, but for lack of a better one... full on hippies... that live the life...I don’t know that they really get where it came from and I don’t know that they have that social and spiritual grounding beneath the party, the source of the party... and I think that’s a shame.

VS: I do too.  Okay on to Puddleduck...

VS: Jemimah Puddleduck does a Graham Parsons song. Are there any more to come in the Puddleduck rotation?

MK: We only do the one song, She, and that came into our lexicon because I picked up a Graham Parsons tribute record and Emmy Lou and Chrissy Hynde were singing it and I had forgotten completely about the existence of that song, but it was always a song I really liked so I just brought it in to the band and said this is a really cool song and I’d love to do it and they listened to Chrissy & Emmy’s version and said: ‘yeah great, let’s learn it.’  I love Graham.  There’s no reason not to do more, but we don’t plan things quite like that.  We don’t plan things period really [laugh].  We have a small enough opportunity to get together and play so we try to add a song or two when we do get together so we’re not constantly doing the same set list, but because we’re not constantly playing together because of our schedules, it’s been really difficult for our repertoire to evolve and expand.  Right now we’re kind of doing the same set of stuff.

VS: Will we be seeing any more/new original MK tunes in the Jemimah Puddleduck set lists?

MK: There are some that exist, I don’t know that they are ones that I’m all that interested in bringing around.  I may sit with them and try to beat them up a little bit so that they make a little bit more sense in today’s world, given who I am today.  A lot of it is just old stuff that doesn’t have much to do with what I’m about right now and some of it is just old music that doesn’t work in this format.  I’m more interested in writing new stuff, either myself or with the band. I’ve approached Barlow and Gerrit Graham and I’ve been trying to get a hold of Hunter to get some outside lyric stuff, although I really love writing my own lyrics.  It’s the kind of thing where if I’m inspired to write a lyric, it will all just barf out of me in no time at all, but I’m not one of those writers that’s always writing….so if I want to continue to have new songs on any kind of a regular basis, then I absolutely need to be open to other people collaborating and as long as I’m in this world, why not use the wonderful guys that are more or less at our disposal.

VS: Is Jemimah Puddleduck going to come back to Tahoe for a little skiing and music this winter?

MK: That would be nice, although they closed Humpty’s.  There is a place in Truckee called Bar of America that I’m going to look into.  Other than that I know they have some outdoor things that happen, but that’s certainly not much that I want to do in the winter time [laughs…]

VS: I hear Puddleduck might tour with Little Feat... rumor or not?

MK: Rumor.  I e-mailed Billy Payne and he has not gotten back to me.

VS: Who makes those beautiful tie-dyes at the Jemimah Puddleduck shows?

MK: Plug!!!!! [laugh] Ben Jammin who is the best tie-dyer in the entire world!!!  Just ask him!!! No, but really he’s a great guy. he comes and he puts his stuff up and he really does do good work.  I adore Ben’s work, but in fairness I have to say that there are some other people around like tie-dye Paul that also do brilliant work, but I love Ben, he’s a great guy and he’s been really helpful to the band.

VS: Can you talk about your feelings about the music industry and Napster?  Where would you like to see it go in the future?

MK: Oh god do we have to go here!!!!  The music industry as a whole is something that sort of sucked me into its black hole for the last 20+ years, which I consider kind of an unfortunate detour in my musical life.  I started out being very true to myself and in the late 70s, early 80s started chasing the ever elusive record deal.  I had whatever the popular haircut was and was wearing whatever those clothes were and playing whatever style of music that was popular for 20 years as a side man in various people’s bands.  I lost interest in running my own show and I think the music business tends to do that to people.  It tends to suck up your individuality because the accepted wisdom in the music business is that 'you have to do this, this or this to become marketable'.  It’s art....fuck ‘em....fuck a bunch of marketability.  If you are true to yourself, there are certain people out there that are really going to enjoy what you are doing and they may not be the tens of millions, but it’s probably enough to make your living at it.

With regard to Napster and like minded services, may they all rot in hell.  I don’t necessarily think that Metallica handled their situation very well, but I certainly empathize with their position.  I see no reason why anybody who has chosen their art to be their vocation and not just their avocation should be required to turn their work over for free.  If somebody chooses to put their stuff on a site like that and have it available as a download... awesome. it’s their choice. it’s their art.  For people to randomly decide that all art is available for free is bullshit. it’s thievery. it’s piracy. it’s whatever you want to call it and it’s not nice.

VS: Even though people have already bought the CDs that they are sharing on Napster?

MK: It doesn’t matter because the 100 people or the 1,000 people or however many people that get the free songs would have had to go buy the CD.  Let’s say that 1,000 people did that, that’s 1,000 CDs I didn’t sell.

VS: So you don’t think that that in any way…by downloading a couple of songs, entices people into buying the CD?

MK: I think for some people it may, but in general human nature is 'if I can get it for free, why should I have to pay for it' and certainly if they make the entire record available on Napster, why should they buy the record.

There are a lot of ways to make this work.  They could pay for a download.  They could have a certain amount of free music as a preview and as an enticement to buy the CD... put up one or two songs for free so that people know what they’re getting into and then if they like it enough, they’ll go buy the CD, but they can only have those one or two for free.  Napster doesn’t have any of that kind of regulation.  Everything is fair game, it’s all free. People use the argument that it’s the record industry and the big record companies that are getting fucked by this because they’re fucking the artists anyway.  I don’t buy it because for one thing, yeah the record companies are getting screwed by it, but whether it’s a small royalty or a large royalty, the artists are also getting screwed by it because every record that doesn’t sell is a royalty that they’re not getting... and what about those of us that out here doing it ourselves?  The Jemimah Puddleduck CD I paid for entirely out of my own pocket.  There is no record company involved.  Every one of those that is stolen, if that was available on Napster, everyone of those that is downloaded on Napster for free is a CD that I didn’t get to sell which means that I am that much further from making back my own investment out of my own personal pocket.  If people don’t respect that an artist needs to be paid for their art what’s going to happen is that nobody will be a full-time artist and the level of artistic accomplishment is going to go down because nobody will be able to depend upon it for a living and you’ll have nothing but the weekend warriors... and kids.

VS: What musicians would you like to play with in the future?

MK: Anyone who will have me (laughs!).  I would probably poop in my jammies if I ever got to play with Paul McCartney or any of the Beatles for that matter, but especially Paul.  I keep hearing rumors that there is interest from the Little Feat guys and being a Feat fan, that would definitely be a thrill for me.  I would kill to play with Dr. John.  I can’t really think of too many other people, maybe Bill Champlin.

VS: Who are your favorite historical & contemporary blues artists?

MK: I don’t have too many favorite contemporary ones.  I find that a lot of what is going on now in blues is a rehash of old stuff, which on some level I can respect, but it doesn’t seem to be about bringing anything new to the party or it’s not really blues. it’s like rock disguised as blues... like Kenny Wayne Shepard and Stevie Ray Vaughn stuff... not that I dislike that, I just don’t think of it as blues.  I guess the closest thing to a contemporary blues artist that I can get off on would probably be Robert Cray.

VS: Historical ones?

MK: God. so many… I could take an hour…

VS: All…?

MK: No I don’t want to say all because there were certain ones that  didn’t light me up, not because they weren’t good, but just because they didn’t touch my spirit like someone else might have.  All three of the Kings, Albert, B. B. and Freddy are way up there at the top of my list… certainly Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Magic Sam... those are probably a lot of my big ones.

VS: What do you have available on the net for sale?

MK: Not enough! I went to Kimock’s website and I was like… damn! I gotta get my ass in gear. Right now the only thing that’s available on the net for sale is the live compilation CD that we put out as Jemimah Puddleduck and there are some posters that Mikio Kennedy did for the Tahoe shows in January.

VS: Do you have archivists recording and storing your live material?

MK: Not per se.  A lot of the shows we (Jemimah Puddleduck) wound up recording ourselves because Arlan is quite the recording buff so he’ll come out with ADATs and we’ll get multi-tracks of the gigs.

VS: Not just Jemimah Puddleduck, but all of the MK stuff…..

MK: No.  There is a ton of my shit that will probably never be heard  again because I don’t even know where it is! [laughs]

VS: Are you ever going to play that sweet Tele you have?

MK: Who the hell said that one!? Oh Craig… okay Jackson, this one’s for you babe!!!  I do play it once and a while.  I had it out for the summer stuff with Ratdog in ’99.  I love that guitar.  It doesn’t really seem to be appropriate for a lot of the stuff that Ratdog is doing. It’s really a great edgy rock ‘n roll guitar and it’s a great country guitar and we don’t do a whole lot of either one of those things.  If Bob would break down and do Me & My Uncle and shit like that... [laughs]

VS: then you’d be breakin’ it out.

MK: Yeah…

VS: If you could take only one CD, tape, etc. to a desert island what would it be?

MK: I’d swallow a gun first...

VS: What kind of shampoo do you use?

MK: Whatever is available at the hotel room usually.

VS: What kind of mileage are you getting with the Jetta?

MK: I don’t know. I haven’t checked.

VS: What is your favorite book?

MK: I hate those kinds of questions….anytime anyone asks me my favorite this or my favorite that or even my top five or ten, I’m fucked because I’ve got really broad tastes in pretty much all of my interests, so I could more easily answer what are my 100 favorite books or my 100  favorite CDs or my 100 favorite musical acts…

VS: Favorite author?

MK: I could do several, but I can’t do one.  I adore Tom Robbins, I love Kurt Vonnegut, Spider Robinson, Robin Silverberg, Heinlen… in a less entertainment, but certainly no less wonderful vein I adore pretty much everything Ram Dass has ever put out, Richard Brautigan, Michael McClure.

VS: Wallet... bi-fold or tri-fold?

MK: Neither.  I have a little silver case that I use as a wallet.

VS: Have you ever worked day jobs?

MK: Yeah…

VS: Doing what?

MK: I was a janitor at an old folks home at one point.  I was a seafood cook at a restaurant.  I was a wood cutter dude.  I was a hay bailer dude.  For a brief moment in LA I was the food delivery dude for a company called Compact Dish.  I was staff songwriter and producer for Studio 56.  They were putting together a music library. That’s pretty much it.  Most of my life I’ve been able to support myself playing music of one sort or another, not always music that I love mind you, but I’ve always been able to do it with the guitar.

VS: What are you looking for in a girlfriend?

MK: WOW!!  I’m looking for a best friend.  I’m looking for a life companion that absolutely has her own passion, her own interests and her own power who wants to come together with a partner in support, rather than being in need of...  I’m looking for somebody that may have things they can teach me about my spirituality, about my humanness.  I’m looking for someone who is as playful and open minded and creative sexually as I am because sadly we live in a time where there is a whole lot of sexual repression.  I’m looking for somebody that, for whatever reason... and there are so many different reasons... but for whatever reason, I find beautiful.  Mostly I’m looking for a lifelong best friend, somebody that I can share my life with and really envision growing old with.

VS: Do you have any outside hobbies? Maybe oil painting, sand castle building?

MK: I really wish I did.

VS: Sex…? [laughter]

MK: Um well okay… if that counts, then that’s definitely one and I’m pretty rabidly interested in movies.  I try to rent a lot of movies and I go to a lot of movies.  I’m working on a pretty good size DVD collection.  I gave myself the gift a year ago of buying a big screen TV and 5.1 sound, DVD player and all that stuff.  So I’m pretty into that and I collect CDs like a big dog.  I’m constantly listening to shit.  I don’t really have any creative outlet hobbies.  I’d like to.  I used to draw a lot as a kid and I don’t much any more... and I used to write poetry as a kid and don’t much anymore so I feel like I owe it to myself to get back into that.

VS: What is your favorite food... restaurant?

MK: This is where the skitzo thing comes in again.  It’s hard for me to put one thing down.  I’m a freak for black urban BBQ like the Everett Jones & Flint's stuff in the East Bay.  On the other hand, I’m a total freak for Sushi. I adore Thai food... good Mexican food is wonderful. I guess Asian food is a heading that I could live with as being my favorite whether it’s Thai or Vietnamese or Chinese or Sushi….

VS: Sharon wants to know: How did you get to be such a nice guy and when are you coming back for dinner?

MK: Dinner is tough just because my schedule is so fucked up all the time.  I don’t know how the hell I got to… (be such a nice guy) I guess I had a good mom….

VS: Any plans to move to the Bay Area?  Are you happy in smelLA?

MK: I love my house in LA and I got a lot of house for very little money, but I would love to come back to the bay area.  It becomes more and more apparent to me when I’m up here that the bulk of my friendships are here. I feel spiritually more grounded here.  All LA really has to offer me is a wonderful, wonderful house in a place that I don’t want to be.

Ratdog

Bob Weir          Mark Karan
Kenny Brooks    Rob Wasserman
 Jay Lane           Jeff Chimenti

Mark Karan joined Ratdog in 1998.  They just released their first CD "Evening Moods" and are currently touring across the country.  

VS: After The Other Ones tour do you foresee an expanded role in Ratdog?

MK: Not really.  Ratdog is a band but it’s built around Bob Weir and he’s without question the focal point, the main featured element. Aside from that we all have pretty much equal input.

VS: For songwriting too?

MK: Well to some degree.  The predominant input there is Bob’s.  We do things as a group, but generally speaking it will start as a group effort and wind up being finished and refined by Bob and whoever he does the lyrics with.  Solo wise Kenny and I are certainly more featured than Rob or Jeff, but I don’t think that because of having been in The Other Ones that I will be more featured than I used to be or anything like that. I think there is a fairly good working dynamic in the band given who’s in it and how it all works together. I think that people that haven’t seen Ratdog in a long time owe it to themselves to come and see the band because I think it’s working pretty well.

VS: That would be me.

MK: What?

VS: I haven’t seen them since this time last year… well New Year’s…

MK: Even this time last year I think it was working pretty well.  A lot of people are judging the band based on something that they saw in 1996 or1997.

VS: Even people that saw you last year and recently that I’ve talked to say it’s a whole different band.

MK: That could be. I don’t know. To me there were certain difficulties in last fall’s tour, but prior to those difficulties showing up, like the previous summer, for instance, we were having a blast and a lot of feedback that I got from people that saw the band that hadn’t seen the band in a long time... the addition of the electric [lead] guitar and some of the new material that had shown up and some of the older Grateful Dead stuff that we had débuted like Weather Report, Terrapin and stuff like that... people were really diggin’ the band that didn’t expect to and I think that there are a lot of people out there that are judging the band based on a long past experience and it really isn’t the same band.

VS: Were you involved with the songwriting for the new Ratdog CD?

MK: Yes.

VS: Is it collaborative?

MK: Pretty much.

VS: What do you think about your Modulus G3 Guitar?  At Shoreline you had a rack of axes, yet aside from a couple of acoustic tunes on a Gibson you spent the whole night playing the G3, any particular reason why?

MK: They had just given it to me.  They made that guitar for me.  Truthfully I was never really a big fan of their guitars and there was interest in me becoming a fan of their guitars.  I told them what it was I didn’t like about the guitars and they duplicated the neck on my ’52 Les Paul... they gave me a beefier neck to play with.  They utilized the pick-ups that I prefer and they put a Bigsby tail piece on it and when that guitar showed up it was like… 'HELLO- You’re my new friend'.

VS: What is your favorite DEAD song to play?  To hear?

MK: See? we’re back into that [laughs]. there’s too many of them…

VS: Any particular favorites that you really enjoy playing?

MK: Sure… on an 'on' night I love doing the St. Stephen/Eleven stuff… Sugaree is absolutely one of my all time favorite songs period... Dead or not the Dead.  Birdsong is a lot of fun and goes some great places.  The Other One is another one that’s a lot of fun and is pretty open ended in terms of its creative potential….

VS: .....and it runs through a lot of the Puddleduck songs…

MK: You know it’s funny… I have a sort of a jokey line that I throw in constantly during Ratdog rehearsal which is that all songs lead to The Other One and it’s really true. There’s something about that groove and that harmonic statement... that simple harmonic statement... that pretty much no matter what you’re doing you could wind going there and so I like doing it. I like teasing it even if we don’t actually go there. I like taking it to that place for a little while and then coming back.  That place is pretty deeply engrained in my psyche and in my subconscious.  I did a lot of LSD in the 60s when I would go see the Dead and that was during a period where Cryptical/The Other One was new to them and they were pretty much constantly playing it and it got pretty deeply embedded in me.

VS: Can you feel Jerry’s spirit when you play?

MK: No.

VS: Is Bobby still playing football on that team with the name Sharon/Paul can’t remember?  Paul wants to play quarterback!!!

MK: It's the Tamalpais Chiefs and yes.

VS: And now for some general questions.....

One of the things that made Garcia such an important lead guitarist during the last half of the 20th century was his compositional genius. He was able to find musicians to work with who allowed him to score improvisational music while performing live in front of tens of thousands.  One of the ways he did this was to demonstrate a particular tonal and rhythmic rift to say a drummer and a bassist then when they took that direction he created patterns of melodies and harmonics around that core, and thus we were given the magic moments of the Dead.  Do you see yourself in the position of having that role in any of the bands with which you are currently playing?

MK: No. (laughs). In all of the bands except for Jemimah Puddleduck where I have a much more influential role musically.  I think that as much as The Other Ones is a band and as much as Ratdog is a band, I don’t think either one of those bands is really about letting the guitar player really take it somewhere perhaps because of the fact that Jerry was so much the focal point for so long for those guys.  Whereas in Jemimah Puddleduck it’s a band and the fellahs really like where I go and they’ll go there with me.

VS: In any of the bands that you are in are there any particular musicians that really stimulate you and your playing?

MK: Yeah. absolutely.  I feel very stimulated by Ratdog because there is a lot of creativity in that band and people that are coming from really different musical backgrounds.  Kenny and Jeff are very much from the jazz school and I’m always fascinated by that even though I’m not a jazz player and actually I have no interest in becoming one... but I’m definitely interested in being influenced by it and understanding more of it.  In that band, those guys are constantly a source of inspiration to me.  Working with Bob is inspirational.  He has his own unique thing and his own take on stuff and some of the ways that he alters chords, nobody else would do it that way.  Some people might even say it’s wrong, but it’s not wrong. it’s just his way and learning to play with that is definitely an expansive thing.  Then I have to go back to my band and say that Jemimah Puddleduck kicks my ass.  I love those guys.  They’re really creative and really supportive... and Hornsby is a thrill for me...he’s fun.

VS: It always looks like you guys were having fun together...

MK: We were having fun and Steve is an inspiration, even though on stage with Steve I don’t feel like he’s that interested in giving up that much space to anyone else… and I think that that’s because he’s been in bands for so long where he’s been the focal point that he’s not used to having to give it up.  So as much as on the one hand he’s very inspirational to me and was super inspirational on the bus when we were swapping ideas and he was showing me things, on stage sometimes we bump into each other, so that’s less inspirational and more frustrating.

VS: You’ve been on the road a lot lately.  How do you like being on the road?

MK: That’s the proverbial two edged sword.  It’s a lot of fun, I love playing music. I’ve met a lot of great people.  I absolutely could never say that my life sucks but it’s pretty weird because I’ve always pretty much traditionally been a homebody.  Until two years ago when I did this, I managed to always make my living doing music in town.  I did a couple of tours in my life ? I was out with Dave Mason a bit in 1991, Sophie B. Hawkins was a grand total of 4 weeks.  I’ve never been out for long periods of time and when I did go out it would be like I’d get a tour and then nothing for two years. it was all in town stuff.  It’s very different.

VS: How do you keep track of what day it is and what city you are in while you’re on a tour?

MK: Sharp Wizard Organizer.

PLAY

WITH

Answer: 29,035 ft.

MK:  What is... how much tape there is in the collective Grateful Dead shows of all times?

Question: What is the height of Mt. Everest.

Answer: 1912

MK:  100 years after the war of 1812.

Question: When did the Titanic sink?

Answer: Europe

MK: What is a really bad hair band...

Question:  Where should Puddleduck play in 2001?

Answer: Ralph Nader

MK: Who is a pretty bitchin’ candidate that will never get elected?

Answer: 60

MK: What is an age I’m not especially looking forward to.

VS: Okay… that’s it.

MK: Well that was pretty painless.