Gordon Keeps Evolving August 2nd, 2006 - The Chronicle Herald (Canada) By Stephen Cooke Former Phish bassist headlines music festival in Antigonish EVOLVE headliner Mike Gordon knows a thing or two about festivals. After all, the former Phish bassist has certainly played his share, not to mention the fact that the band became legendary for staging its own, including The Great Went and Lemonwheel, at Loring Air Force Base in Limestone, Maine. These late '90s extravaganzas drew fans of the cult phenomenon from across the globe, not to mention the neighbouring Maritimes, and would become a model for fan-friendly events that followed, including this weekend's Evolve Festival taking place outside Antigonish. "They were just great fun, I have very fond memories of playing those," says Gordon from his home outside Burlington, Vermont. "Our manager would spend about six months in advance, with a team of about 30 or 40 people, and design a whole theme park, where artists would come in and build a city with all kinds of strange buildings and signs and art pieces. "And then in terms of the camping and access and showers and everything, there was a huge attempt to do it better than most other festivals. We wanted to make it nicer for people, in ways they don't usually get, and just do that. I remember in contrast, the 25th anniversary Woodstock concert, and how much of a disaster it was. They were charging $10 for water and people were dehydrated, you couldn't get anywhere, and our last concert in Coventry had problems due to the rain and the weather, but the Maine ones were great." Gordon and Phish bandmates Trey Anastasio, Jon Fishman and Page McConnell made rock history with their fan-centric approach to music, building a huge following outside of the usual mainstream channels and paving the way for the jam band revolution. The band called it quits in 2004 after over two decades of building one of the most idiosyncratic careers in popular music, but the legacy continues. Most recently, Gordon was just on the road for a few weeks with Anastasio and the Benevento-Russo duo, playing shows in support of The Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh. While he describes himself as "a little road-weary" from the experience, Gordon says it's been gratifying to revive his musical partnership with the former Phish guitarist. "Last December, he and I did this thing with Bill Kreutzmann from the Dead, as a trio (called SerialPod). It was just one gig, but it was amazing, Kreutzmann is an incredible drummer," says Gordon. "Trey and I also got together and wrote some songs together for the first time ever. In the 21 years of Phish, we had never done that before, so on this tour we were playing some of those songs. So things keep evolving." While Gordon doesn't know when, or even if, he and Anastasio will record this new material in the studio any time soon, he certainly enjoyed creating it. As for why he and his former bandmate never wrote songs before, over 20 years of playing together, he can't really say. "It's hard to explain," Gordon muses. "Maybe the dynamic didn't really allow for that before. It would have been too strange for the other guys if two people were teaming up. A lot of the writing was done with Trey and his songwriting friend from school, his lyric writing friend (Steve Pollak, a.k.a. The Dude of Life [PA correction: Tom Marshall, not the Dude]). "We just got together and did some jamming, tossed ideas back and forth, threw out some lyrics, and yeah . . . pretty natural. The lyrics just kind of flow together, it's all immersed when it's working right. I guess it's the melody that connects the jam with the words. It becomes the focal point." A multi-instrumentalist also skilled at guitar he's held his own on two albums with acoustic folk legend Leo Kottke banjo, piano, harmonica and percussion, Gordon comes to the Evolve Festival with his latest musical project, a modern honky tonk hybrid called Ramble Dove. The idea of the band actually has its origins as a fictional entity in Gordon's film Outside Out, but like Kurt Vonnegut's writer character Kilgore Trout or, dare we say it, Spinal Tap, it became a functioning creation in its own right. "I did a cameo in my own movie as a country star, and called the band Ramble Dove," explains Gordon. "Partly because I thought it was silly sounding, but then we needed a name for this. The way this came about, there was a weekly honky tonk jam every Tuesday at this local coffee shop, and I started going. For almost six months I was going every Tuesday, and the capacity for this place was 39. "It ended up being really fun, and became a really important part of my week, I couldn't skip it. So when it got to be time to put something together for Bonnaroo, it ended up seeming like the natural choice to make a band out of it." Gordon feels he's assembled a bunch of "great players" for Ramble Dove, to create a lively mix of stretched-out, body-moving music he calls "a long ride through funky twang." "We've got some really great singers, that was the original goal. Brett (Hughes), Neil (Cleary) the drummer and Marie (Claire) the keyboard player all have incredible voices. I really wanted to learn some things about singing in that style. "That was my main goal, I learn things just being around them. I was going on Tuesday nights just to listen, before I started playing. Then I ended up learning a bunch of songs. I don't do the bulk of the songs, but I've learned a whole pile of songs, more than ever, to put the thing together. "Plus I've ended up writing songs for the group, so it's ended up being more inspired and confused in ways that I don't even realize. Some of the songs just really got to me. I have a weak heart for simple tales of heartbreak, I guess, so I'd really fall in love with certain songs from one week to the next. I even wrote a song called Ramble Dove, I figure we should have a namesake song, and that ended up coming out rather nicely." Article Copyright © 2006 Chronicle Herald