Moonalice, also known as Pete Sears, Barry Sless, Roger McNamee, John Molo and often Jason Crosby is looking forward to a stellar and art filled new year. After his previous chat with Moonalice founder Roger McNamee earlier this year, our own Rex Thomson continued to do some research into the band’s tireless work to make the music scene a more welcoming place for everyone, especially the poster art community. We followed up with McNamee about his new art center, the band’s plans for the future and his thoughts on the future of the music of the Grateful Dead.
Live For Live Music: The last time we chatted, you were helping to build an art studio for the team that does all the incredible artwork for your poster series. How’s that progressing?
Roger McNamee: The Haight Street Art Center is going to be located on Haight Street at the corner of Laguna in San Francisco, right near city hall and right near Market Street. It’s an amazing location, and a series of wonderful, lucky coincidences have given us a chance to get this building with twelve thousand square feet. We’re basically going to be dividing it evenly between a studio for producing poster art and gallery space for artists to show off their work.
We started the project about three years ago and we’re waiting for the last approval, that we’re expecting in the second week of January. When we get it, we will occupy the building, and we hope to start printing within a month. We hope to have the galleries open to the public by spring of 2016 in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the “Family Dog” and the incredible artistic gold rush that was the beginning of the “Rock Poster” era of the sixties.
L4LM: It’s impressive how committed both your bands, Moonalice and the Doobie Decibel System, are to the original poster art scene.
RM: The poster thing is foundational. Moonalice was put together in 2006 by the legendary T-Bone Burnett. He was beginning a series of Americana roots albums, which he got into right after putting together the “O Brother Where Art Thou?” soundtrack album. At the time he did us, he did two other bands, he wanted to start the series with three new bands. The first, the most known, was Raising Sand, with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. There was also an Elvis Costello and the first Moonalice album.
He told us “You guys are gonna do San Francisco psychedelic roots music. And…you gotta start all over again. It’s gotta be a new band, with new music. So we sat there and tried to figure out what we were going to call this band. We wanted to have a new strong relationship to the San Francisco psychedelic movement, so we started to think, “What are the components of that?”
There were a few things that really stood out, and the rock poster art really first and foremost. It happens that my wife and I are both long time fans of the poster art scene, so we know a bunch of the artists. So we got Chris Shaw, one of the best of the second generation of poster artists, to be our art director. He was there before we even started the band.
When we were actually trying to select the band name, he was there to cast the tie-breaking vote that picked Moonalice. He just said “Look, it’s gonna make for WAY better poster art.” The moon is classic trope…and Alice means you can do thing about women…we can really run with it. The source of the name was obviously Jackie Gleason and The Honeymooners. Those were two words that lent themselves to art.
We’ve now done 870…I think 872 posters for Moonalice and I think 50 for DDS, over 900 posters in like eight years. The hilarious thing is, in the beginning we just thought “Let’s do one for every show!” We didn’t realize at the beginning that we would be doing around a hundred shows a year, and we had no idea where we were gonna store them all. Since we had limited space on the road, we’ve had to be creative in figuring out how to store them all.
It worked out tremendously well, artistically. Imagine being us, and every week we get a new batch of posters, like three or four works of art, sent to us. We’ve had thirty artists on the team so far, and that number grows every year. We’ve had artists from all the different eras of the poster art scene, and all of them are producing spectacular stuff. A wide extraordinarily range of people and loads of different styles.
Then we realized, “Wait a minute!” We were putting out all these posters, but it was hard for people to enjoy them. So we decided putting out books. Just last week, we published the newest volume of posters and legends…this is volume six. It’s around one year per volume. They include the poster for each night, the set list and the legend I tell each night.
The legends began with me rooting around Wikipedia and looking for something interesting to share. Then I realized, I have these posters. So I started trying to find something funny to say about it. A lot of time the artists will do that for me. But every night, at the end of the first set, I introduce the poster, tell a short legend, then we take a break. Then we come back out and finish the show.
L4LM: A different poster for EVERY show. Does any part of you think that’s a bit…crazy?
RM: Hey listen man, rock and roll is crazy. (Laughs) None of it sounds crazy in context. You can sit there and say “That’s nuts” but to me, that’s just rock and roll. It’s like Jimi [Hendrix] lighting his guitar on fire or Pete Townshend destroying drum set with his guitar…that’s rock and roll.
L4LM: If anything, your form of expression is far less destructive, we’ll give you that.
RM: Maybe this is the part that’s crazy. WE are a small number of people, doing something creative. Our goal is to create something with our art, our music, that could maybe make the lives of our fans better. Same thing with the poster artists…one or two people make the posters, and it goes out there and a lot of people enjoy them and they create a lot of joy. Very inexpensive.
We had multiple goals with the poster artists from the beginning. The first was we believe in poster art, but we also feel that poster artists were kinda taken advantage of by bands, by venues, by merch people. We thought we could help to give them something a bit more fair. Granted, we don’t pay a lot for each of these to be made. But we want to make sure all the copyrights for all the work belongs to the artist, so they have a chance of getting something going in the future.
And that’s how it started, but eventually we realized we had this functioning cooperative…and that’s where the notion of the print making shop and gallery came from. What’s come from it is that we’ve helped the poster artists get on more solid footing, which has resulted in us getting better and better art all the time from them. That’s pretty exciting for everybody.
We have a bunch of goals we’re trying to accomplish. We want to encourage more bands to do more concert posters, and help the new generation of artists. We also wanna help some of the old school artists who got taken advantage of in the old days, so we try and work with as many of them as we can. We want to try and get more women in the field, so go out of our way to find more women. That’s three goals, and if we’re making so many of these posters a year, it gives us a chance to fight for all of these things.
L4LM: That’s great that you are doing that for the community. Speaking of being part of a community, I hear you have a pretty interesting New Years Eve planned…
RM: We’re playing a show at our home venue, the Sweetwater Music Hall, with a band called The Weight. That’s a band that was created by Jim Wieder, who was the guy who replaced Robbie Robertson in The Band in the 80’s. He is also the guitarist in the Ramble band, Levon Helm’s Ramble Band from his shows in the barn. These guys play original music and music from The Band. We’ve played with them before and it’s going to be pretty exciting.
I grew up listening to The Band. They’re foundational to me. If you were to put together a soundtrack to my life, The Band would certainly be on there. New Years Eve is, to me, a rock and roll tradition. Following that, we’re going up to Alaska. We played up there in August, but this is the second time we played in Alaska in the winter. We’re playing at the Alyeska Resort, which is the big ski resort south of Anchorage. We’ve got two shows up there. The sun will be up for about three hours a day and hopefully we’ll have the Northern Lights going while we’re there. We’ve got our fingers crossed.
L4LM: So you’ll be on the road to start the year?
RM: Yes, but soon after those shows we’re going to be putting out a new record. For the first time, besides the CD and digital versions, it will be available on vinyl. What we’ve discovered is vinyl is unbelievably hard to manufacture now. We’re not entirely sure that the vinyl is going to be ready to go at the same time as the CD version. We’re really excited about this record. In the past we’ve done them all as EPs, with five songs, and without any attempt to find five songs that fit together.
This time there’s eight songs, and there’s really a united theme between them. It’s really all about coping in a world gone mad. These are songs that have been at the core of our set for the last year. People who know the band live will definitely recognize the material. We have a single on there we’re really hoping to promote big time, called “High Five.” I think it’s an amazing instrumental. It’s a big part of our live show, and the fans seem to really groove on it. We spent a lot of time trying to really get it right.
The band is going to have a really cool 2016. We’re not going to tour as relentlessly as we have in years past. We’re still going to do all the big stuff, but we’re going to try to not be on the road as relentlessly as we have done in the past. We’re going to do a smaller number of bigger shows, like the 4.20 show in San Francisco…we’re really going to make that a special one this year. Y’know…it’s fun to be Moonalice.
The world of live music is different than it was yesterday. The venues are split between these giant venues with metal detectors and the service fees are three times what the price of a ticket used to be. Then there’s club gigs where bands have to work their asses off just to make ends meet. We’re privileged in that our fans have given us a chance to do this in a way that’s sustainable. To be able to do this, and be creative and successful.
One of our goals for 2016 is to learn a lot of new material, We’ve spent most of 2015 and even a big chunk of 2014 out on the road, and we toured relentlessly. But we have a lot of our songs that are almost finished, and we want to take the time to finish that. And the band itself…three of our guys play regularly with Phil Lesh, and there’s a lot of opportunities for them to go do that and we want them to have that chance. Everybody in the band has more than one thing.
L4LM: When I hear you say that you’re having trouble getting vinyl produced, I can only envision us talking about you opening up a record plant in the near future…
RM: (Laughs) It’s funny that you say that…I can promise you that’s not gonna happen. The reason vinyl is so impressive to see today is because most of the industry has gone away. Vinyl really is growing, and it’s impressive to see. But it’s a really small market, so the runs are really limited. People make 500 copies of an album, so there’s lots and lots of records getting made, but at only 500 at a time. It’s not like the old days when they were making a hundred thousand copies at a time.
L4LM: You’ve mentioned the old days a bunch, and speaking of that…I see you’ve started your own radio station as well?
RM: We have! Our good friend Ben Fong-Torres, the great writer from Rolling Stone, came to us and said “I wanna create a radio station!” He wanted to make a station, and I think he was using us as an excuse. It’s a great thing and it’s working amazingly well.
The station’s really cool, ’cause it’s not just playing our stuff. It’s playing all the stuff that inspired us. And Ben’s a legend. When I was growing up in the 70’s, he was one of Rolling Stone’s most important writers. The fact that he wanted to do this with us was a no brainer. A big part of Moonalice is experimenting…and this has been a lot of fun. You can find Moonalice Radio on Moonalice.com/moonaliceradio
L4LM: It’s nice having a person curate the music for us, rather than a scientific algorithm.
RM: I am so with you on that one. Music plays a different role in culture than it used to. Fifty years ago, there weren’t that many types of entertainment available to people, and music was the most accessible. It was relatively inexpensive to make, you could carry LPs around, everybody had a record player. Music has been a dominant element of the lives of young people for a long time. And now, with all of these other things, music is a thing that is part of other things. Video games, and movies and such…music is now a PART of the entertainment. And it’s the other thing that people are spending their money on…music is environmental now. People just expect it.
L4LM: The band has always been hi-tech…shouldn’t you be figuring out a way to just beam the music right into people’s brains?
RM: Not yet is the answer. I’m into letting people decide what they want in their minds, I’ll leave broadcasting directly into people’s minds to people like Donald Trump. We worked really hard to figure out what the next step was for people sharing live music would be. We’ve done a lot with simulcasting… we’ve done about 500 of our own shows now. And we’ve been able to do that for other bands and even festivals.
We’ve done it for the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, which is one of the biggest festivals in the country. We’ve been experimenting more recently with the native Facebook video, so we can do stuff from our cell phones. We did some of the first Dead & Company shows, and it was amazing how many people watched those shows. The first show we did of those guys in Albany, I broadcast probably 2/3rds of the second set, and over 50 thousand views for those videos in the first couple days.
It was the first most people were seeing of them, it was a week or so ahead of the free show they did at Madison Square Garden. They were pumped that Moonalice was helping promote them. They were wanting the tour to be successful, and helping folks see the fun was definitely a great way to build the excitement. From the Moonalice point of view the whole thing was really helpful too.
A lot of people picked up on it because it was the Dead, but a lot of people were coming to our page to see them. The technology allows us to do lot of really cool things, and what we’ve been able to do is figure out how to do it cheaply. For a band our size it’s really great to help people decide whether to come see us or not. Just go online, check out a show or two, and then decide. Between that and the Facebook and social media we’ve really managed to get our message out to a lot of people. We’ve spent a lot of time figuring out what Facebook algorithms care about.
L4LM: The Dead & Company guys have really been on a role. Everybody is raving about the shows.
RM: I believe there’s been a lot of interesting incarnations of the Dead since Jerry died. For me this is my favorite. I can see how some folks might prefer Phil and Friends, or The Other Ones…what have you. I can see how some folks would naturally prefer Phil Lesh on bass…but Oteil Burbridge is excellent. Obviously you might prefer Jerry (Garcia) to John Mayer, but Mayer is fucking excellent. Bobby Weir is sounding great…he was great at Fare Thee Well, and he’s sounding better now!
Billy Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart have never played better, and Jeff Chimenti is terrific. As Weir will tell you, this band had a lot of time to rehearse and get it together before they started playing. Nobody is just mailing this in, I promise you that. They’re playing these songs like they wrote them.
L4LM: Well, thanks again for talking to us, and for all you’re doing to help the music community move forward.
RM: Thank you. We’re not sure what the future might bring. There’s always surprises to come…but Moonalice looks forward to sharing the love with our fans!
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Be sure to catch McNamee’s two bands, Moonalice and Doobie Decibel System, on the road! The band schedules can be seen below, and more information can be found on the Moonalice and Doobie Decibel System websites.
