Mike and Leo’s excellent adventure November 15, 2002 - Boulder Weekly by Dave Kirby Spinning down the highway recently from Philadelphia to Washington, Phish bassist Mike Gordon struggled at times to be heard, and to hear his interviewer, over a shaky cell connection. His partner in improbability, country blues picking legend Leo Kottke–who’s never seen a Phish show–was in the van right next to him. So we weren’t sure if Gordon, by most perspectives the junior partner of this enterprise, would speak freely about their recent CD collaboration, Clone, and the sheer oddness of this whole thing. But he did. We think. "I really can’t pinpoint exactly where the balance is," he said of the audience mix at the shows so far on their three-week tour. "I’d guess there are Phish fans and Leo fans at every show, but it seems to change a lot. "I remember talking to one guy at a show a couple of nights ago. He said he was a Phish fan and couldn’t really understand why there weren’t any Leo fans. But we’ve also heard the exact opposite. Maybe they’re not really talking to each other or don’t know each other is there. I kind of think we should get the one Leo fan to meet up with the one Phish fan." The collaboration first hatched when Gordon, a longtime Kottke admirer, introduced himself to the guitarist after a Burlington, Vt., gig in 1999. He presented a cassette of one of Kottke’s early recordings, The Driving of the Year Nail, with his own overdubbed bass parts. The two communicated on and off, caught an odd jam session when schedules permitted, and finally solidified their efforts with three trips to producer Paul DuGre’s Burbank studio earlier this year. The resulting CD, Clone, is a testament to symbiotic musical forces at play in a low-risk environment. Like any good collaboration designed to find common ground and a mutually created voice, the CD spills past the middle and leaks over both ends. Bits like "Clone" and "The Collins Missile" draw directly from Gordon’s Phish-esque whimsy and stream-of-consciousness gestalt, while "June" and "Te Veo" sound like standard-issue Kottke with a neatly sympathetic bassline underneath. The stuff in the middle–the bouncing weirdness of "Car Carrier Blues," the warm country laments of "I Am a Lonesome Fugitive," the frayed cascades of "Disco," and the eerie drift of "Clay"–fulfill the promise of a weirdly satisfying middle, a sort of quasi-ambient, slightly bruised Americana. The sessions were largely unstructured, and the CD sounds like it. "I wasn’t really intimidated going in to record this," Gordon said. "I had a feeling it was going to work out, and it ended up working out. "There were definitely times I just watched him play. But that can be a good thing. It’s a kind of listening, listening more than playing. Playing with Leo, it’s different for both of us. He’s got one more person around and I’ve got two less. There was a certain amount of freedom, I guess, but also being forced to hear the tunes and find the right notes, the right spaces to leave alone. It was fun, but it was also a challenge for me musically." Gordon will tell you he’s a student of the bass guitar. His recent film, Rising Low, is comprised of interviews with 25 top bass players. From those interviews, he admits he tried to capture the essence of bass playing, pinpoint its role in a musical context, and try to define abstractly what makes great bass playing what it is: "One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is ‘accepting.’ It’s accepting the tune the way it is, the sound, the space you need to fill, and the space you need to stay out of. It’s not fighting against the song, but finding the best way to serve the song. "When I was interviewing all these bass players, I guess I was trying to learn what they did to reach the top of their craft, but also what they were thinking while they played. What was the thought process to go from one spot on the neck to another? What led from one note to the next? How they make their choices. To me, that’s the essence of playing–the choices you make. And it’s still something I’m working on." Asked whether he was looking forward to New Year’s Eve, when Phish returns to the stage after nearly three years, Gordon just said, "Oh yeah, it’ll be fun. It’s been awhile." © 2002 Boulder Weekly