PZ: Could you tell us a little more about Ricky?

JH: In Bruce Hampton's philosophy, he was second in command. He played with Bruce for years before any of us even knew him. He was a local guy to worship around here. In the late 80's when I got here, he was the number one guy in town. He was the first called bass player in Atlanta. He was known for being able to get everything on the first take and known for playing with this crazy guy Bruce Hampton. They were known for being more performance artists than they were for being musicians. The music - it was almost like they made fun of everybody's preconceived notions that musicians are these deep artists and stuff. They ran with that and made fun of it and made the focus be, "Well, hey this is a piece of wood and I'm running my hand over it. I'm not Mother Theresa. I'm not changing the world. I'm not feeding the homeless or curing incurable diseases. I'm a musician." That's sort of where they were coming from.

PZ: So how did you come to play with Ricky?

JH: I got to know Ricky through playing with Bruce and he was a guy that we just had the utmost respect for. When ARU broke up and just couldn't play anymore, Jeff [Sipe] and I thought wed just pick up where we left off with Ricky since he more than anybody really got Bruce's philosophy on a deeper level. Right near the end, ARU would do stuff and at the time I didn't get it. We'd have a sold out audience and no real songs for the first 45 minutes. I'd think, [CLICK TO LISTEN] "What are you guys doing? You're going to empty the room." You know, they wanted to go out for the first 45 minutes and not play any songs and just let the flow take you. And the nature of something like that is that some nights it's going to be really good if the flow is there and then other nights it's gonna suck. It all comes back to that philosophy "Life ain't always good, why should music be?" So we did do that sometimes and we did lose people. And people did come and go, "Hey, they were so good last night, what happened?" But right near the end, I started to get it. It started to... it actually got into my subconscious and I got really comfortable with that philosophy of hey, let's go play, but we're not gonna play a song. And then right at the time I started to get it the band kinda started coming apart. So then I was like, "Man, (laughs) I just started to get it and now we're not doing it anymore. Now I don't fit in with anyone because I'm crazy. I want to go and play no songs." (laughs) Well, Jeff and I figured let's just take the same philosophy and go do it with Ricky, the one who really knows what Bruce is all about. So we did.

It saved Ricky in a way because Ricky had started a studio back in the 80's and the only reason he started it was to document the works of Bruce Hampton. Well, as time went on, he had to start paying for the gear. So he had to take some of these corporate jingle accounts. Well, he got so good at it that his focus shifted from playing bass with Bruce Hampton to, "Oh, I've gotta pay the bills this month so I'll do this Coca Cola jingle." Well, to make a longer story shorter, he was dying to play again, because it was a number of years that he was stuck in that corporate world. He did it so well, just like he did everything. Ricky was one of those guys, that when somebody saw him with Project Z, they would never know that same guy could produce an R&B hit or produce a jingle for an ice cream company that would stick in your head until you went to go buy ice cream. (laughs) Ricky could just do anything when it came to music. We kind of saved him. He was really in a bad way. He was so depressed. He had gone through a divorce. He was really depressed because his life didn't revolve around vital, vibrant music anymore. It was actually the corporate world and he was caught up in all that. When Jeff and I went to him he was just thrilled with the idea and said, "Let's go play!" So we tested it out.

PZ: So you guys played some Project Z gigs...

JH: Yeah, we went out and played some gigs and we didn't have any songs. It was a little nerve wracking to me because I'd show up to the club and they'd say, "Guitarist with Phil Lesh and The Allman Brothers" and the room would be filled with these Allman Brothers and Dead fans. Well, we'd start playing and they'd be like, "What in the hell is this?" (laughs) I mean we could've gotten away with it a lot more if we would've had a lot of songs and then thrown that stuff in on the side - but that wasn't our thing.

I was fortunate because I had this gig with Phil and with the Allman Brothers. I could do something for arts sake without having to worry about them taking my house. Those guys though needed work. So I was just like, we could do two things: We can either put a band together and really do this right. You know, write some tunes here and get a singer and we could go out and do it, or we could go out and play music for art's sake. Well, if you know Jeff and Ricky you don't even have to wonder what their response was - there was no hesitation. They were like, "Let's play music for art's sake."

So we did. We went out there - some gigs were great, some gigs were not great. (laughs) Then we decided to make a record. The first record we made [self- titled, Project Z] - it really took a long time to make it. I was in Phil's band and Allman Brothers Band at the same time. I would get home and work on it for three or four days and then I'd have to take off again. I'd come back about a month later for about three or four days and then I'd have to go back again. So you know, the first record had some actual songs on it.

PZ: What about the new record?

JH: We did it about three years ago. We went into the studio and recorded completely live. We put everybody in the same room. To me, that's the secret to why the record works. You know how most of the time you go into the studio and you've got the drums in one room, the guitar and amps are in the second room and you're looking at the drummer with headphones on through the glass.

PZ: It can be synthetic feeling...

JH: Yeah, and see that's the way you're supposed to make records, but I don't like that. So we had this unique opportunity to go into a really fine studio. We were only going to have one day. We went in there and just set everybody up in the same room. We put some baffles between the drum set and the guitars to try to keep bleed-through to a minimum, but it was bleeding. (laughs) If you took me out of the mix, you could still hear me. When it marinades that way - when the drums are bleeding through the guitar mics and vice versa - there's a cohesive thing it creates that you can't get when you isolate everything. But at the same time, if you screw something up and you have to fix a guitar track - you can't because the drum track has the guitar in it. We didn't know we were making a record. We were just knocking the dust off of it because we hadn't played in such a long time. We went in there just for fun. We didn't go in there with the thought, "Let's make a record today." The result was - and I still feel like - it was the greatest artistic statement we ever made together. Sadly, it turned out to be Ricky's last studio recording.

PZ: I'm really so sorry to hear that. It was such a shock. It's so cool you saw the project through though.

JH: It really was a tremendous shock. He and I just four days earlier were in the studio editing. We had three and a half hours of no songs. We played for three and a half to four hours in the studio and I didn't think anything of it. Then a couple months later he sent it to me and I heard it and was like, "Oh my God. This is the best thing we've ever done." You know, I didn't expect it. I didn't expect to like it. I mean it's crazy man - there's no songs, but artistically it's the best thing we've ever done. It's on the edge. It's not much different than something like Miles might've done or Coltrane when he was constantly exploring, except for one thing, there's humor all through it. It's just us speaking Bruce's code. And we did it with the guy that knew it better than anyone, Ricky Keller.

PZ: So Greg Osby's on your new album too. Awesome! He's my favorite contemporary Jazz genius.

JH: Well, Sipe - he's always seeking out great music. He came to me years ago and said, "You've gotta hear this guy Greg Osby." This is long before I met Phil. He played Greg and Steve Coleman for me at the same time. I was just like, "Man, these guys are great!" I really started to get into Greg's music. Then I met Phil and Phil had mentioned in some Rolling Stone article that Greg was his favorite sax player - and Phil and I had never talked about it before. Then, Greg calls up to say thanks to Phil for mentioning him in Rolling Stone Magazine and Phil says, "Hey, why don't you come and play with us?" And he did. So I hung with him, met him and played with him. It was at that point that I knew that something was going to happen. So when I called him to do this thing, he was into it. He was coming into Atlanta anyway, so he just came in a day early. He had a gig in this place next to The Fox. He came down and just killed it man.

PZ: From watching him play with Phil, he's the kind of guy that could just come in for a few hours and change everything.

JH: He did exactly that. (laughs)

PZ: So the new album line-up is you, Ricky Keller on bass, Jeff Sipe on drums, Greg Osby on sax, and Jason Crosby on keyboards. So you guys really didn't go into the studio with anything pre-planned - nothing in advance?

JH: First off, I gotta say Jason is great. He's the glue that held this whole thing together. He really knocked me out on this recording. But to address your question, no, [CLICK TO LISTEN] you know, like I said it wasn't supposed to be a record. Ricky mentioned at the end of the session, "You know, we might have enough to make a record." We all just looked at him and busted out laughing because, you know, we had just spent three and a half to four hours just vomiting on our instruments. None of us thought, "Oh we're gonna make a record. You know, we were just having fun. We went in with absolutely nothing. Not one pre-conceived notion. Not one. We just started playing.

PZ: So how did you go about dividing up tracks for the new album?

JH: If you look at the record, there are thirteen pieces, but really in truth there's only five different pieces. Some of them were so long. One of the things that Ricky talked with me about before he checked out was that he thought we should put locate points on some of these longer pieces because if a piece is 23 minutes long and there are some parts in the middle that someone likes, folks won't have to hold the fast-forward button down for twenty minutes. So, on the record, the first four tracks are only one piece and if you don't hit the fast-forward button, you'll hear it straight through. The second piece is actually track number five. The third piece is actually tracks six, seven and eight. Tracks nine, ten and eleven are actually the fourth piece. Tracks twelve and thirteen are the fifth piece. When you listen to it, it'll be real clear. Don't hit the fast-forward button because you're not going to get the same impact as if you'd listen to the whole album through. So I'd like to say to anyone who is depraved enough to sit through this whole thing, that they listen to it as a whole. (laughs)

PZ: Now that being said, how do you go about naming all thirteen tracks?

JH: Well, naming them came after the performances, of course. Naming them was easy. I just used a lot of the vocabulary from being around Hampton. I named the first piece Departure, as in Ricky's departure into the next realm. The last piece was Arrival, as in his arrival to the next realm. Everything in between - I named all the pieces, like I said using our vocabulary. You know, a lot of it is just idiocy. (laughs)

PZ: What do you think of the new album when you go back and listen to it?

JH: Usually I can't listen to myself play at all! This is the only thing I've ever recorded that doesn't make me cringe when I hear it. It's got warts man! It's got mistakes, it's got things like sloppy guitar playing at times like when I would try to go for something and it didn't quite work out.

PZ: But sometimes that ends up being some of the coolest stuff...

JH: That's what I've seen happen and been told by others too. But I'm just supercritical of my own playing and that's part of the reason that I've always had trouble making records. Sometimes I hear stuff that people will play me from live shows and I'll be like, "Oh, shit, why wasn't that a record!" But most of the time the recording equipment or recording itself is not quite good enough to make into a record. But with this new Project Z album, it's the best of live music and a good recording. Even when I hear mistakes here and there, I just think, "Oh yeah, that's kinda cool!" That's part of the magic of it. The fact that we were all in the same room made it what it is. And the fact that there's so much humor in it - that's another thing I love about it. I'm just glad we did it before Ricky passed.

PZ: Unfortunately Ricky's gone, but will we get to see any live performances?

JH: Maybe, but it won't really be this music. This music could never be recreated even if Ricky was still here because of what it is. Normally, if we came up with something like this at a gig, I would try to take some of the best parts of it and write tunes around them - there's like a million tunes within this one record, but ironically, that's what we planned on doing when we went into the studio that day. Initially, my plan was let's go into the studio and take some of the things we did at this stellar gig from November 30th, 2000 at Ziggy's in Winston-Salem, NC and knock off a little dust and write some tunes. But then the day we made this record, we just started playing and man, we just couldn't stop! Then we realized at that point, let's forget about writing tunes and let's just play - and that's what we did. It was just one day with something special. The next day would have been a completely different record. And that's what I loved about playing with those guys. I know Miles Davis always changed up what he did on a regular basis and he never made any excuses for it, but I want people to know that this is not a collection of songs. It's not Grateful Dead meets the Allman Brothers Band. It's not songs with vocals - no, I don't sing on it. (laughs) It's really hyper, all over the place, some great grooves. Sometimes when we lock in on something, it'll all change. It's out there. A lot of it is tongue in cheek. You know how Zappa had that question - does humor really belong in music? - and we think it does! Bruce wasn't there for this record, but he really was the catalyst and we were celebrating him. And after Ricky passed, Jason's idea was perfect - The Lincoln Memorial. I love the album cover too! You really need to read the liner notes too - that'll help you get it.

PZ: Who did the album cover?

JH: Flournoy Holmes who did the Eat A Peach album cover - he's been a good friend for a long time. He's in the Zambi family and he was really good friends with Ricky. When he first made it and I saw it, it was ghostly - I had to jerk back tears.

PZ: Where did you record the album?

JH: ZAC Studio in Atlanta, it is owned and operated by Jim Zumpano. We have known him for years and he offered us a day in the studio. Without Jim's generousity we could not have made this record and special thanks to Souvik Dutta for putting the record out through his site Abstract Logix. He's got a great super list of artists.

PZ: So what's next for you as far as side projects go?

JH: Well me, Jeff Sipe, Greg Osby, Matt Garrison, and Bobby Lee Rodgers were gonna go out and do some dates in September but it looks like we won't get to do something until the new year. It won't be this exact Project Z music, but it will be another piece of the puzzle. The Project Z influence will be in there, but it won't be the focus. No doubt, it'll be fun.

PZ: I know you love to fish so I was hoping you could tell us about one of your favorite or most memorable fishing expeditions....

JH: One that comes to mind is me and Derek in Costa Rica - we caught a 500 lb. black marlin! We went fishing in Costa Rica for sailfish at Taj Mahal's Annual Blues Music Maker Foundation Tournament. They asked us to be a part of it and we were honored, plus, we were looking forward to catching sailfish in Costa Rica. Sailfish average about 100 lbs. So you're fishing with basically about 50 lb. tackle, which is a lot of fun. Well, we weren't expecting it but [CLICK TO LISTEN] a 500 lb. black marlin jumped on and then we had to fight that fish on 50 lb. tackle. And I fought it for the first hour and 15 minutes and in that time the skipper had his hand on the leader three times so the fish was circling the boat only about 12 feet away and you could see it - it was 13 feet long. It was devastating! And of course, when we first hooked it, it was jumping all over the place and when a fish that big is jumping 40 feet behind your boat it'll put the fear of God in you. Well, I fought it for an hour and 15 minutes and at that point we had a legal catch - the legal catch in a tournament is when the skipper touches the leader which is only 12 feet long. So he touched the leader three times so we had the legal catch so it was okay for me to hand the rod over to Derek without losing the tournament. I was just like, "Man, this thing's killin' me and I can't do this anymore." 500 lb fish on 50 lb tackle with no stand-up gear of any kind. The things that you normally have for fighting a fish like that are a harness that goes around your kidneys and fastens up at the reel and it takes the heat off of your left arm, or you have a fighting chair and you fight the fish from there. Well, we had neither of those things. So we're essentially catching this 13 foot marlin on really skimpy tackle and it was killing me. I had cramps in both my legs and arms; my shoulders were killing me and my back was hurting. Finally I handed the rod over to Derek and it took him another hour and 15 minutes to get the fish up. So we each fought it for an hour and 15 minutes. At two and 1/2 hours we got the fish up to the boat. We revived the fish and the fish swam off. They measured it. They measured the girth and the length of it and estimated it at 500 lbs. So that was awesome! And a lot of funny stuff went on along the way that I can't really tell ya, but it was a blast! That story comes to mind though because it was a realization of a dream for both of us. We won the tournament. The fact that we won was just hilarious to us.

PZ: That's a great story! Thanks for sharing that one - very cool! Jimmy, thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us.

JH: Hey man, it's great talking to Philzone! Thanks to all of you out there.

Click here for the Projecy Z press sheet

Listen To Project Z mp3s:
Samples from the new Project Z Album - Lincoln Memorial
Stale Salt Lugs / Freener Frolic / Zamb Fear / Microburst

Order Project Z's new CD here
Zoners get $1 off! Use codes (US) pzoneus, (Int'l) pzoneint
Coming Soon: Enter the PZ.com contest to win a free CD

Listen To Live Jimmy mp3s:
Dragonflys - August 23, 2005
Cats & Dragonflies / Jam> Leave Me Out Of This
Aquarium Rescue Unit - August 15, 1993
ARU/Allgood Jam
Aquarium Rescue Unit Reunion - October 22, 2004
Zambi> Space Is The Place (with Derek Trucks) / I Don't Want Nobody (with Susan Tedeschi)
Workin' On A Building / Time Is Free (with Derek Trucks)

Listen/download tons more ARU, Phil & Friends, The Dead, Allman Brothers Band & more here

Websites: JimmyHerring.net, Abstract Logix, The Dragonflys, Aquarium Rescue Unit,
The Code Talkers with Col. Bruce, Phil & Friends Official Site, Greg Osby, Jeff Sipe, Jason Crosby

Also read our interview with Jimmy from 2000 here.

SPECIAL THANKS TO JIMMY & CAROLYN HERRING. Many thanks to Souvik Dutta and Abstract Logix, All the photographers - Schnee, Michael Weintrob, Brian Shupe, JC Juanis, Tony Stack, Dan Bertolette, Flournoy Holmes, Tamera Morgan, Julia Mag, Rob Lucente, and Victor Bradley.

© 2005 Philzone.com, 2012 Productions
Interview conducted by Bret Heisler August 26th, 2005.
Transcribed by Jennifer DeVincenzo.
All photos © copyright photographers listed and Philzone.com. All rights reserved.
This interview and/or photos included may not be reprinted anywhere in any form, online or offline, without the express written consent of Philzone.com. However, we certainly encourage you to link here.

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