Mike Gordon - Inside In August 1, 2003 - Big Hassle Media By STAFF Press Kit - Inside In Inside In is Phish bassist Mike Gordon's first solo album and the long-awaited CD complement to Outside Out, his first full-length feature film. Using themes from Outside Out as a launching pad, Inside In plays through like an audio movie, unfolding as a series of intertwined aural dreamscapes. Over the course of 15 tracks - roughly half with lyrics and half without - Gordon departs from conventional forms, achieving liftoff into an otherworldly, musical realm. A sense of improbable but enchanting contrasts leads to a place where urban, hip-hop-style drums groove amiably with the lonesome train-whistle whine of a pedal steel as recurring themes and hidden motifs dart in and out of the mix. Such unlikely but fortuitous combinations don't occur without a willingness to experiment and tap into a kind of sober hallucination at which Gordon is expert. "The experience of music lies in some indiscernible space between being asleep and being awake, so I really love the fact that the album is dreamy," says Gordon. "I wanted it to flow in a certain way. It's supposed to unfold like different dreams in the same night or parts of the same dream where you're in different settings." Songs like "The Lesson" and "The Teacher" project an aura of musical surrealism. In "The Teacher," Gordon's protagonist - an uncertain young man who's trying to master guitar as a way of breaking out of his inhibited shell - steps back from his life and sees it all swimming by him. In the second verse, sense and sensibility break down entirely via a sequence of collapsing diminished chords as the lyrics correspondingly fall apart. The music dramatically evokes the "unlearning" phase that proves a necessary breakthrough as far as finding his own voice on the instrument and in his life. In "The Lesson," he imagines being at one of his guitar lessons and how it feels like an outer-body experience; trains and railroad tracks figure in the trance as well. Gordon stresses that Inside In isn't exactly a soundtrack, although it includes expanded and embellished versions of music written for Outside Out and new pieces inspired by the movie's themes. "I regard it as more of a solo album than a soundtrack," he says. "I'd like to think you don't have to watch the movie to enjoy the album." Gordon suggests that the best way to experience Inside In is over headphones in a darkened room. Released in 2000, Outside Out stars paradigmatically "outside" musician Col. Bruce Hampton (cofounder of the Aquarium Rescue Unit, Hampton Grease Band, Codetalkers, and others) as himself. The film relates the comically poignant tale of "a boy, and a guitar, and his desire to be a true artist." The character, an introverted teen played by Jimi Stout (now a real-life Phish roadie), makes little progress as a musician until he encounters guitar teacher Hampton via his "Outstructional Video." The method of instruction - based on the notion of "unlearning" everything - is initially confusing, and Rick's playing actually worsens until he grasps the real point of Hampton's seeming madness. Gordon appears in the film as a drawling Southern-rocker who claims to have attended Hampton's funeral. Inside In represents Gordon's first stab at being producer and bandleader, and he relished the opportunity. "When I'm a leader, this whole part of my personality just comes to life," he says. "I get into this mode where I'm on fire with ideas and following through with them. If I'm collaborating with people, I'm calling them constantly. I got into a very high-energy mode." He enjoyed "zooming in and out" as producer, trying different approaches to songs and sometimes letting the pieces find themselves by being open to chance and experimentation. "What made it work for me was being open to discovering as I went along and not having too many preconceptions," he explains. "My goal was getting inside of the songs, just grooving and trying to elicit some of the magic that can happen when people are really listening to each other." The fruits of this approach can be heard on such pieces as "Steel Bones," on which pedal steel guitar and trombone dreamily slide together, painting a plaintive mood, and "Take Me Out II," which got stripped down to its countryish essence. "Gatekeeper" is another sparsely arranged piece in which less says more. "Major Minor" is a totally impromptu E-minor jam that got extracted from rehearsals for "The Teacher." "Couch Lady" is rather unusually driven by five tracks of hi-hat, which overlays a Latin drumbeat and bluegrass elements. The core band for the album comprised Gordon (who also played bass, guitar, keyboards, Moog synthesizer, percussion and more), drummer Russ Lawton, pedal steel guitarist Gordon Stone, and pianist and trombone player James Harvey. Phish fans will recognize Stone, who played on "Poor Heart" and "Fast Enough for You." Lawton, also a member of Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio's band, co-wrote a few instrumentals on Phish's Farmhouse album. Gordon describes Harvey as the quintessential Burlington, Vermont, musician. The album is liberally salted with guests musicians, including banjoist Bela Fleck, plus Jeff Coffin (clarinet) and Future Man (percussion) of the Flecktones; bluegrass legend Vassar Clements on fiddle; renowned pedal steel guitarist Buddy Cage, who's played with Bob Dylan and New Riders of the Purple Sage; and Phish drummer Jon Fishman, whose bass-and-drum jams with Gordon provided foundations for songs like "Gatekeeper" and "The Lesson." "I really think the band and players are the keys to this album," says Gordon. All of them proved willing and able to adapt to Gordon's often unconventional musical overview. He recalls how banjoist Fleck stepped in and, being so musically adroit, was able to "rip right over" the strange chords of "Steel Bones" with no problem. Dixieland jazz trumpeter Craig Johnson proved up to the challenge of the avant-garde when Gordon asked him to play wrong notes and "out stuff"; just listen to the "strong and wrong" note that closes "Beltless Buckler." In "Bone Delay," trombonist Harvey jams to steady echoes that he created as he went along. Gordon contends that pedal steel guitar is the main voice on the album. It is also, he claims, his favorite instrument besides bass guitar. Steel figures prominently in the melancholy mood of "Beltless Buckler," and it is the "emotional quality of the pedal steel" that Gordon cherishes most about the instrument. He also notes the instrument's ability to be both "inside" and "outside": "Here it is, a key instrument in country music that's allowed to be almost spacey-sounding with lots of reverb" Pedal steel made perfect sense for this album, where there's all kinds of tension between tightness and looseness, rootsy sounds and spacey tangents, and the ever-present dichotomy between inside and outside. For his own part, Gordon is particularly proud to have played, in addition to bass, every six-string acoustic and electric guitar on the album. He went all out on "Exit Wound," a piece for baritone guitar that he labored over through an entire night. "I really wanted to get the vibe right, not in specific ways that can be put into words but just a feeling," says Gordon. He assayed 500 takes before pronouncing himself satisfied. "Instead of being tedious, it got to be a real emotional experience," he says of the process. Gordon recorded half the album at a custom-designed home studio in Vermont and then relocated it to his current New York City base of operations, where Inside In was finished. Given the luxury of time, Gordon worked up incidental score music from the movie - even something as skeletal as a bass-and-drums vamp - into fully formed songs and instrumentals. Thus did the background music from Outside Out get moved to the foreground on Inside In. Gordon realized he'd accomplished something extraordinary when he gave the finished album a listen during a spin around the city. "I rented a Mercedes sports car with an incredible sound system," Gordon says, laughing, "and drove the whole perimeter of Manhattan with a gang of friends, listening to Inside In really loud. With the volume and the ambience and the whole thing, it really coalesced for me." "I feel that I've captured what I like about certain favorite kinds of music pretty well on this album," he notes. "It has some spacey parts and some country parts and some funky parts. And I worked really hard on the segues, wanting to have the right amount of silence before or transition into the next thing. Just the combination of sounds on the album really feels right to me." Inside In will be released August 26 on Ropeadope Records. Press Kit © 2003 Big Hassle Media & Mike Gordon