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Schleigho Travels the Road of Innovation
interview Page 1
Page 2 of interview
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Some bands pop up out of the blue and become the hottest s**t on the block faster than the last culture craze can be taken off the shelf. Quickly, they become the bad aftertaste in your mouth, like that briefly flavorful piece of gum that leaves your tongue red and bitter the next day. On the other side is the band no one has heard, but whose name continues to surface occasionally in the local tour listings. That type of outfit tends to pop up in casual conversation with a snobby music aficionado (who is only interesting and tolerable when taken in short bursts). Year in and year out, that band's name reappears in magazine ads, on message boards, and elsewhere, and a person begins to think "these guys must really be good to tour so much, or else they really suck and don't know it."
Enough with the vague editorial about mythical bands and sociological theory! There exists a band in the latter category by the name of Schleigho (pronounced shlay-ho), who has been touring the country for seven years. No, they do not suck. As a matter of fact, they are musician's musicians—the kind of group whose name pops up when people mention hardcore players. These are the type of guys with the skills to stand up to any band and the zeal to make music their life without compromising their exceptional talents for a commercial meal ticket. That, in a nutshell, is Schleigho—200 or so shows a year, a growing fan base, respect from other musicians, and a brand of improvisation-based, hard, electric jazz that inspires awe before dancing.
Schleigho recently signed with Flying Frog Records, the label owned by Butch Trucks (Allman Brothers Band), and released its latest album, Continent, last year. musictoday.com was curious about what drives the success of one of the best touring improv groups on the East Coast. We found drummer Erik Egol on a brief road hiatus. We picked, probed, and let the man speak freely about life as a member of Schleigho. Few would guess that a man who speaks so little on stage would have so much to say…
musictoday.com: Your band is one of the most relentlessly touring bands on the East Coast, still you find time to write new music constantly. Is there any one member in the group who writes the majority of the material, or is the creative process a collaborative effort?
Erik Egol: It is collaborative in the sense that it takes everyone in the band to finish the tune. It was pretty equal between Drew, Suke, and Jesse (Schleigho's other members), because they are playing the more melodic instruments. Everyone comes in with the tune ready to go, maybe minus the segues or ending—some of the minor parts would be missing, but the major parts were always there. As a group, we try to link parts together; we troubleshoot grooves that don't work so well with a certain part and can be changed to make them fit better in the song. Collaboratively, we would fine-tune something that was about eighty percent done when we got it.
mt: That song writing process is helped along because you all play out so frequently.
EE: Yes. The improvisation of our tunes writes the last half of them, basically. We will learn a tune and think that it is the way we want it to be, and a couple of months later, it will be completely different without any rehearsal. We rehearse it until it is tight, but as we improvise over it every night, little changes and cues start coming up. The ones that work, you tend to keep. A lot of good things that happen tend to stick, so songs become longer and more complex.
mt: I can imagine then that your recorded music would be tiresome for you to hear, because the versions on the album are so outdated—at least in your ears. Do you ever go back and listen to your older albums?
EE: No. [Laughingly] I never really go back. Sometimes, I do listen to them to hear the recording quality, because the longer I am away from them, the more objective I am in hearing it. Sometimes, I throw it on just to see whether or not I like it a year later. We have taken two approaches with recording. We used to play a song repeatedly in the live setting until it was as mature as we thought we could get it, and until it was to the point we knew people wanted to hear it, then we would record it. Then, we realized that people are getting material on the album that they have already heard for a year. On the last album, Continent, we decided to go in there with mostly new material. A lot of the tunes in the studio we were writing while we recorded. "Keep It in the Car" didn't exist before we went into the studio. That song was totally written while recording. I think it is one of best tunes on the album. That was the first album where, when we put it out there were tunes on it that people hadn't heard. That is good and bad. It is good for the fans and it is good for us because it is a new experience, but then again sometimes a year later, we are like, "Aw man, I wish we had waited a year to record that song!" All the tunes on Continent, even though they were brand new, were taken from the approach that we wanted them to sound complete within themselves. The songs sound more like different versions than immature versions. We had a producer in the studio who really helped give the songs a mature feel even though they were new. You don't want to go into the studio trying to create spontaneity, and we didn't have to because the songs were all new. Our producer would ask us to play parts in a certain way, like maybe more swing or more on the Afro-Cuban tip. So, we had someone with us that forced us to hear our songs a million different ways.
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