With their feet firmly planted in ferociously experimental jams and over twenty years of "Deadicated" appreciation for most of the Grateful Dead's repertoire, Rob and Jeff of The Zen Tricksters took a step further into the cosmos on October 7th, 8th, and 9th when they joined Phil Lesh, Steve Kimock, John Molo, and Bobby Strickland for Phil & Friends shows at the Warfield in San Francisco. These shows explored and redefined the outer regions of three decades of Dead music as well as some other classics in psychedelic jazz-inspired improvisation.

After only a few weeks, Rob Barraco again joined Phil & Friends for the Fall Phil Lesh and Bob Dylan Tour from November 2nd through 18th playing with some of Phil's other fine friends including Warren Haynes, Jorma Kaukonen and Derek Trucks. In Phil's fine evolutional selection of bandmates, Rob again was called upon for the coveted Philharmonia show on December 5th joining David Crosby, Donna Jean Godchaux-McKay, David Grisman and many other fine musicians.

Recently, Philzone.com had the honor of speaking with Rob and Jeff about their experiences - musically and personally - with Phil, and their further exploration with The Zen Tricksters. These talented musicians were full of insight into the scene and revealed some of their stories with honest wit.

The Zen Trickster's latest all-original release, A Love Surreal has further elevated this organic, grassroots band into the spotlight. They maintain an ever-active tour schedule and have shows from tonight well into March of 2000. Don't miss them!  

This is how it went...

Philzone.com: So, Rob you’re fresh off the Phil & Friends tour. You and Jeff did the three Warfield dates (10/7-9) and then you did another 13 (11/2-18), and now you guys are back on tour with The Zen Tricksters with barely any break. How does it all feel?

Rob: It’s interesting because both of the places that we [The ZTs] played - like the other night and tonight - the sound systems aren’t that great and the monitors aren’t that great so for me the other night it was really interesting because we started playing, and I was like, "Wow…this is way different," you know. It took me about half the set before I got normal again. My ears had to adjust back.

Jeff: Yeah, you get spoiled.

Rob: Yeah, you get real spoiled having that huge sound with monitors that were just so clear and beautiful sounding. Plus, I had four of Phil's speakers right behind my rig just blasting at me.

PZ: Were you able to hear everyone else okay? 

Rob: Yeah, the way we did it was really cool. They wanted to keep the stage volume at a low level so they didn’t want to use side fills, and they didn’t want any of the instruments in the monitors, so what they ended up doing was running satellite cabinets from my side of the stage. I had a cabinet for Warren and one for Phil with volume controls so I could adjust them the way I wanted them, and I could hear it perfectly. It’s so much better then having it blasting through monitors.

Jeff: Right, and then from Phil’s side of the stage we had a Lesley for the organ and an amp for the piano and an amp for Kimock.

Rob: Yeah, they did the same thing for the Dylan leg of the tour. Derek had a cabinet rigged similarly to Jeff's setup, but for me it was a little more primitive at the Warfield. There, they just had a guitar amplifier with the keyboard running through it. For the Dylan tour, they had two self-powered monitor speakers with my keyboard in stereo and a Lesley from my organ as well.

PZ: Wow, I wish I was sitting up on stage with you guys listening to it. It must have sounded excellent!

Rob: Yeah, it must’ve sounded really sweet on Phil’s side of the stage. Phil’s rig just sounds unbelievable. He knows (pointing to Jeff) because he was standing right there and got blown away by it. (laughter)

Jeff: Yeah, I was standing right next to him.  

Rob: Phil’s tech would get his bass together before we would do the sound check, and when the tech's playing, the rig sounded okay, but as soon as Phil steps on stage it’s like whaaaahow! He just knows how to hit it together and make it sound right.

PZ: Oh yeah, we all love that when he hits that resonance….

Jeff: "The PHILZONE"…if you know what I mean (lots of laughter) 

PZ: So let’s back it up for a minute.  How did it come to be that you played with Phil anyway?

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Jeff: Well, actually what happened was Phil heard a copy of our new CD, A Love Surreal. He had "heard" about us, but he had never really heard us, and he was looking for some uh…new blood…

Rob: Fresh meat. Those were the words they used exactly (laughter).

Jeff: Fresh meat, yeah…(laughter)..I think that was the word they used.  You know, as opposed to always using the "classic" rockers - instead of bringing in Jorma or Little Feat or people like that. They wanted some "new meat" so he heard our CD and was really impressed with how we were able to jam in the studio. 

Rob: Phil said that in all their thirty years, the Dead could never jam in the studio. After listening to our CD, he said something like, "I can’t believe what you guys were able to do….how do you do that?’

PZ: Do you have any explanation for your ability to jam so well in that setting?

Jeff: We didn’t know that you couldn’t do that! (laughter) 

Rob: It’s true. I think it also comes from playing a lot. We’ve played so many different kinds of shows. I think some of our best playing has been for no one, probably because the pressure’s off.  Or when you have a small audience, you just do your thing and we’ve gotten really comfortable with that. And now we’ve been able to carry that over now from a bigger audience.

Jeff: Well the pressure is on in the studio. But it’s a different kind of pressure.  

Rob: But we still had less pressure than a normal situation. We were given the opportunity to just go in and do our thing without much of a time constraint. You know the clock is ticking…

Jeff: But you don’t want to do too many takes of something anyway because then the music just tends to get stale and you start second guessing stuff. 

Rob: Yeah, second guessing things and dwelling on stuff. A lot of the material we did on the new CD are first takes - especially the jams.       

Jeff: The jams yeah, first or second takes. 

Rob: We had every intention of fading out some of the jams afterwards because we were looking not to have so many long songs, but the jams went so beautifully and they ended so organically. We couldn’t have written or scripted better endings.

Jeff: At first, we figured we’d jam 7 or 8 minutes then find a good spot to fade out thinking something like "all the best stuff was up until there" and then this is just kind of extraneous, but it didn’t really work out that way. We liked them through to the point where we stopped playing them.

Rob: Yeah, those jams were just so cool, so we kept them all.

PZ:  Yeah, it definitely worked out well. The album is fantastic!

So do you know if Phil had anyone else in mind for the Warfield shows, or had he already had his mind set on you guys?

Jeff: Well, he knew that he was doing the tour with Warren Haynes, but Warren wasn’t available to do the Warfield or the Fillmore and the first four shows of the Dylan tour.

Rob: Jeff was actually supposed to play the Fillmore and the first four shows of the Dylan tour.

Jeff: But then Phil got an opportunity to play with Paul Barrere and Billy Payne from Little Feat and…

Rob: And he’s wanted to do that forever. I guess he met those guys back in the 70’s when they did Shakedown St.

PZ: So how did it go down? Did one of you guys personally get a call from Phil?

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Rob:  Yeah, well, Jeff and I live together…

Jeff:  And we were on the road and had just stopped at a convenience store, and I decided to call home for my messages. While Rob was on the phone next to me talking to his girlfriend, I'm getting my messages, and I hear "Uh hi. This is Jill Lesh from Phil Lesh and Friends" and I’m like, "Oh yeah, right - someone's playing a cruel trick on me?"
(lots of laughter) 

Rob: At the same time this is happening my girlfriend is saying to me, "You know your booking agent just called and is frantically trying to get a hold of you." And I said, "why what happened?" And she said, "Nah, it sounded like good news but he wouldn’t tell me what it was." Meanwhile I’m looking at Jeff and he’s just like (insert beaming grinning face)…. 

Jeff: “We got the call!! We got the call!!”
(laughs)

PZ: So you got the call from Jill and then what?

Jeff: Then I called - well, first I composed myself (laughs) and I called her back and she said, "We’d like you to come down to the Dead studio and play for a few days." You know, they were kind of keeping their options open.

Rob: Yeah, noncommittal.

Jeff: Yeah, but at least we knew that we were gonna go down there and play with Phil and that was enough right there.

Rob: Yeah we both said, "Even if we don’t get to do it, just the fact that we’re gonna get the chance to play with Phil is just so cool," you know?

PZ: Yes, definitely! So you never actually talked to Phil – you just both showed up and that’s when you first talked to him? 

Rob: Yeah, I went down first because Warren was there and I was sitting there and all of the sudden the door opened up and Phil walked in. I was just like (insert enthusiastic fist clenched)..."Ahhhh!"

PZ: So what were the first words exchanged?

Rob: Well, he looked at me and immediately walked over and said, "You must be Rob." And he shook my hand and said "I’m really happy to meet you" and he immediately said something like "I loved your CD…I loved your playing….and your band’s really great and I’m really looking forward to meeting Jeff." It was really cool. Phil was really nice and….

Jeff: He’s really nice, really warm, really down to earth guy. He’s in such a good space – so happy. You know, he’s just really loving life…loving playing music again.

Rob: He loves his family and he and his wife are totally in love with each other and they express it openly.

PZ: Yeah, I saw them "make out" a few times on stage. It was really a beautiful thing to see them so in love.

Rob: Oh yeah. Every night they'd have a big passionate kiss before he'd go on-stage. (Smiles)

PZ: Sweet. Okay Rob, you first rehearsed with Warren, and then Jeff, when exactly did you join in?

Jeff: After Rob rehearsed, he came back out to do a couple of shows up in the Northwest. Then we both went down and played a couple of more days with Warren since Kimock was unavailable - my "audition" so to speak, if you want to call it that. It was also a rehearsal for Warren for the tour because he was going to be busy for a month of touring with Gov’t Mule and some other things. From there we knew we got the gig and we went home for a week and then back out to the West Coast for six days of rehearsals and then the 3 shows at the Warfield.

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