Jon Herington interview 2014 part deux

* This is PART TWO of an interview that originally appeared on themusicroom.me in 2014

Special thanks to Tony Keefer

Dishing With Jon: Health and Happiness On The Road With Steely Dan in 2014

Jon Herington interview by Ric Hickey for the Music Room RH: How do you stay sane and healthy on the road?

JH: Well, you gotta try to develop good habits, I think. A few of the guys that I hang out with frequently like (keyboardist) Jim Beard, who’s an old friend, and (drummer) Keith Carlock, we’re big fans of quality food. So we try to take little culinary tours as much as we can! (laughs) You know, find good restaurants and we also like to eat healthfully. So, you know, we do that and we also hit the health club and try to get on the treadmill regularly and do some working out. I have a bunch of exercises I try to do to keep my arms in shape and my upper body in shape because that’s what takes a beating when I play this much, and at this age. (chuckles) But all those things kinda help, and I think the routines help you manage mentally as well. The gigging thing, the touring thing, it’s a funny thing. People can get the misconception that it’s all about the shows. And of course, you know, for audiences it is. But that’s a very small part of the entire day for us. (chuckles) And it goes by pretty quickly! And it’s the fun part usually but the travel is really what you’re out here doing. The bulk of it is moving from one place to the next. You know - unpacking and packing, and getting to the next hotel room, and that part of it can be a challenge. I have a new hobby. I’m trying to take pictures. I’m trying to learn to do photography. I never really learned the technical side of it and I finally broke down after lusting after a really quality camera for a couple years. I bought it before this tour. So that’s also been a good distraction for me. It gets my head out of the music and into the world a little bit more, which is fun. So I guess everybody has his way of coping. I’m also working a little bit on a couple of other projects in the little time that we have off. And those I can do in my hotel room on the computer. I’m trying to get a book of Jazz guitar chord melody solos together. I can edit them and input them into a program on my computer so I can do that anywhere. And I’m also doing a little more editing on some tracks for a new solo record that we were able to start but not finish before this tour. We did the tracking in February and it’ll have to wait until this tour is over for me to dig into it and record overdubs and guitar solos and vocals and all that. But the basic tracks are pretty much done. I’ve got all those things going on, so there’s plenty to do. And that helps. If I were out here with only one job in mind I think I’d go a little stir crazy.

RH: Nice to have some creative outlets outside of your “day job”! The photography keeps your creative juices flowing, for example…

JH: Yeah, it’s an interesting thing. When I first started - and there’s been other years when this has been enough - to just try to play this job well. But I guess over the years as I’ve gotten more comfortable playing it and we’ve done the same tunes again each year and it’s the same band each year I get comfortable more quickly. It’s a little easier. It’s a little more fun. I can be a little more spontaneous and I can relax a little more, typically. Although it still presents challenges to me as a player. For the first week of this tour I took a few pictures but I didn’t get any work done on the other projects. I basically was just trying to get my head into the music and decide what I needed to do to get it up to speed, personally, as well. And, you know, it’s a demanding chair! In this band, the guitar chair, it’s not an easy one. At least not for me. Maybe it would be for somebody else. There’s a lot of room to play, but it’s a handful. There’s a lot of stuff to keep together and remember. I need to be in pretty good technical shape to do it well. But as the tour goes on it gets a little easier and more comfortable which is a lot of fun.

RH: I see (Jazz guitarist) Bobby Broom is opening a lot of dates on this tour. Does your schedule allow you any opportunities to catch his set?

JH: I’ve been able to listen only peripherally because some of the venues have dressing rooms close enough to the stage that you hear it, uhh… whether you want to or not! (laughs) I always want to, but again, at the beginning of the tour I tend to not want to put too much input into my ears because I want to stay focused on the music we’ve gotta do. But he’s a fantastic player and I’ve always enjoyed his playing. He’s been in the opening band for these Steely Dan tours for several years now. This is a different band this year, but he’s always a thrill to hear. He’s a fabulous guitar player and the way he plays, that’s the kind of Jazz guitar I really love. His whole stylistic point of view is a beautiful thing. He’s in that Grant Green, George Benson tradition, in a way, and that’s just gorgeous to me.

RH: With Steely Dan having such a wealth of amazing material to choose from and, like you said, having just toured last year and jumping back into it for this long tour through the summer, is there anything new in the set right off the bat or any of Walter or Donald’s solo material?

JH: There hasn’t been any solo stuff. I think there was something that we were doing that was kinda new… (pausing to think) … We’re playing “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” quite a lot. We’ve done it more often than any previous tours already this year. And I’m grateful for the repeated opportunities to play it because I always thought, “Can we run that again?” (laughs) And they don’t tend to want to do that for some reason. I’m kinda surprised it’s stayed in the set as much as it has and I hope it continues to stay because I really love it. And it’s certainly a huge hit, so the crowds really recognize it. They know that tune. I wish I had a setlist in front of me, but I don’t. There’s a lot of tunes I wish we could do every night but it’s too long of a list and we don’t have time, actually! We’re doing one I love, a great song called “The Things I Miss The Most”, although it hasn’t been in every show. It’s one from their last record, Everything Must Go, and it’s got a great lyric. There’s a couple tunes on [that album] I always loved, the title track and that one. It’s a fantastic lyric. That’s a fun one to play but it’s not one the crowds recognize as much because those records certainly were not big sellers like the iconic ones of the 70s.

RH: Speaking as a Steely Dan fan myself I love that album and Two Against Nature (from 2000). Donald and Walter have also made some brilliant solo records but I guess when you get in front of a Steely Dan crowd not everyone is going to recognize that stuff.

JH: (Somewhat wistfully) No, I guess not. We used to do a few Donald tunes. And I think way back in the 90s, before I got in the band, there were some shows where Walter did some stuff from his first solo record. But we’ve never done any tunes from Walter’s Circus Money record, which is the one I got to play on. And I don’t think we’ve ever done any from the last two solo records that Donald did. I don’t think we’ve ever played any of those live except when we did a short, month-long solo tour with Donald in ’06, I think it was. But, I mean… (chuckling) It’s not like they need more tunes, ya know!? You can try to do all the hits and recognizable tunes and you can’t fit ‘em all in a set. The night isn’t long enough for that. So there’s no shortage of goods. But there are some great ones that would be so much fun to play. Like from (Fagen’s 1982 solo debut) The Nightfly in particular, those songs are so strong. And Walter singing his own tunes would be a treat for everybody who knows those records. And I’d like to see that. I’d like to hear that. But it doesn’t look like that’s in the cards. I used to fantasize about a night where we’d have, basically an entire night with an intermission, maybe even two short intermissions. Do like a half hour of Walter’s tunes, then do Donald solo tunes for a half hour and take a break, and then come back and do Steely Dan for the second half of the show. I think that would be an amazing night. Like, dispense with an opening band and just have those guys do their solo thing as the opening act. I think that would be great. But that would be a long night for everybody, so they might not go for that. It’s probably going to remain just a fantasy of mine…

RH: Well, there’s definitely not enough time in a typical 90-minute to 2-hour set to even play all of the classics that people are going to recognize.

JH: No. And we probably do a 2-hour and 15-minute set once the encore is done. But there are several tunes, sort of in the middle of the set right now, that really go on for a while and that gives the horn players room to solo. They each get to play and there’s some stretching out instrumentally going on. And if we tried to design a set that had less of that, you know, we could get a lot more songs in. Because there’s a bunch of gems that are not long, like “Pearl Of The Quarter”. We were doing “Bad Sneakers” again for a while this year. Which somehow we haven’t been playing much lately, but that was in there for a while. But, you know, those are these little short tunes. “Any Major Dude” is a little like that. You know, they don’t last long. But they’re these gorgeous little gems. They’re often a little lighter. They’re not like heavy hitters and they’re not long, drawn out, groovy vamps or anything like that. They’re just these great little songs. And, you know, for one or two of those 8- or 9-minute jam songs you could get like five of those other type in there! (laughter) So, uhh… That’s another thing that probably won’t happen either! But I just love so much in their catalog and it would be a treat for us to be able to play more songs per night. I imagine it would be a treat for the audience too. But, you know, these guys, as they’ve gone on over the years, they’ve become real Jazz lovers and fans of instrumental music as well. And they love the idea that they’ve got a band that can do that and they want to use them. And I can’t blame them. It’s their right. But there are other ways to look at it.

RH: I guess the fans want to hear their favorites and the familiar songs they’re going to respond to. But a couple of those longer tunes, you know - they want to hear you stretch out too - like on “Deacon Blues” or “Aja”. That’s part of what they’re looking forward to from a Steely Dan concert too, I think.

JH: Yeah, I think so too. And that is part of the Steely Dan repertoire too. They’re able to do these pop songs but then somehow make room in this seamless way, like “Aja” does, to make them epic instrumental adventures too, which is fantastic.

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