Chino Moreno (Deftones), Chuck Doom (Crosses), CrookOne, Rick Verret, Todd Wilkinson, and more recently Gil Sharone (of Marilyn Manson/The Dillinger Escape Plan fame). These guys offer their heart to a band that hopefully people haven’t forgotten about: Team Sleep. Their first and only album – an amazing collection of all these different styles and sounds that amazed a bunch of people – was released ten years ago and now they’re finally back with a fantastic brand new live album, entitled Woodstock Session, Vol. 4, and have already announced a series of EPs. We had the pleasure of talking with founding member Todd Wilkinson about this new live album and what’s to come.
How did the Woodstock Session come to be? You were invited to do it, right?
The way that it came to be was: our friend Chuck [Doom], who is in Team Sleep, is friend with the guys from Woodstock, the studio, and they have done this kind of thing a few times with other bands [Alan Evans Trio, Medeski Martin & Woods + Nels Cline, and Rich Robinson]. It just seemed a cool idea, so last summer Chuck and I went out there, and like we had some songs we were working on for our studio EP. So, we worked on some stuff in the studio, to kind of get the feel from the place and the people, and everything was just really cool, man. Good people, good studio, beautiful place, good town, and it was a lot of fun.
How was the experience of sharing these moments with the fans? I mean, they were there while you guys were recording, right?
Right. It was a great experience. I’m not… I think that the world that we live in, the music world, is so weird. It’s so theatrical. I don’t know, it’s just seems weird to me. What I like to do is hang out with my friends, and cook, and eat, and play music. That’s why this seemed such a cool idea to me, because there wasn’t any real pretense. It was like, “We’re coming out here. We’re going to play music. We’re going to hang out with everybody, and just see what happens.” It was really a lot of fun. Things right now are just so focused on people making moves and being strategic. I just like to be in a room with people and hang out, and I think that’s the magical part of it. Just connecting with people, whether are my friends or whether is just people that want to hear the music. The band hasn’t really done anything together, as a whole, for a long time. You know, I talk with these guys all the time, but it was really cool for us to come together and being in the same room with each other, and spend a few days together rehearsing and actually playing… I mean, just to see each other. It was really a great experience.
It was everything recorded in only two days, right?
No, it was just one day. So, we recorded all the songs in one day and it was kind of cool because we had been working on some new songs and this was kind of way to come together, replay some of the old stuff and work on some of the new stuff.
Is it important to be connected with the old material while writing new material?
They’re really different, but yeah. I think that what we are doing now, musically, is kind of different. This was kind of a big rock show, we were playing live and loud, really focusing on loud guitars, and drums. It’s so much fun, on a social level, to be in a room with everybody… that energy, you know what I mean? I don’t know if it was really reconnecting with the old songs as much as each other, as people. I also think there’s something really special playing music together. This is a band that has a really, really, really good rhythmic section. Gil Sharone (drummer) and Chuck are complete badass. It felt so good, man… I think we’re fucking hot. We’re a hot live band. [laughs]
Was the process of choosing which songs would be record the same as the process of choosing the setlist for playing live?
Yeah, I guess it was. We wanted to do a lot of new songs but we also weren’t really ready for it. So, we did a couple of new things and… Chuck, Gil, and I have been playing together for a while, a couple of years, so we were able to do a couple of new songs that will be on the live album and that haven’t been out before. It felt good to do a little bit of new stuff but it was just like the songs that we like to play.
You guys launched a PledgeMusic campaign for this live album. How that went?
It’s good, man. Everyone has been really positive. [pause] It’s like a business element of it that I’m kind of detached from. It’s a cool way for us to reach out to people without having to deal with a lot of formalities with record companies. When we released the first Team Sleep record, with Warner Brothers, the people there were actually really cool, but I think that now there’s so much possibilities because we already have a small group of people who like us. I really wanted to do as much as we can to get rid of people in the middle, and just be able to put out a lot of music. Because we have a ton of music that we haven’t released. Like, in my mind Team Sleep never really went away because I talk to these guys all the time and we write stuff, we send stuff to each other. That’s my perception of it but I forget that we haven’t got anything out for a long time. [laughs] It’s been kind of cool to do it this away and I’m really looking forward to the next couple of years and putting out a lot of music.
“This was kind of a big rock show, we were playing live and loud, really focusing on loud guitars, and drums. It’s so much fun, on a social level, to be in a room with everybody…”
You said “we don’t really think of it as being in a band together.” Do you think that will always be the case with Team Sleep or the future with the EP series can change that?
I don’t know what I meant when I said that. [laughs] But I think what I meant was that these are my friends and I don’t hang out with my friends to play volleyball at the beach or watch sports, when I hang out with my friends we make music together. I don’t feel that I’m in a band in the sense of me trying to make a living off of it, and having like a marketing plan, and a business strategy, and all that shit. It’s not like a work thing and I kind want to protect it. I want to be naive about everything that we’re doing. I don’t want to be good at the music business. I want to say “fuck you” to the music business, but like in a nice way because I don’t want to be angry about it. Basically I just want to protect this part of my life and be able to do music with my friends, share it with people, and just have fun. The world that we live in… it’s really easy to be cynical and angry all the time and for me music is a way to make life better. I want to be stupid, I want to be naive, and I want to make bad decisions just to allow myself to be a kid. [laughs]
You said “the creative process has become increasingly fragmented and dehumanized.” What did you mean by that?
It’s about not being really around people when making music. I think it can be like both ways. You can make music alone in your house, when you’re writing something, and it can be really personal, which is a cool thing. Because of technology, I can write and record something in my house all by myself, but I think because of that you lose that feeling of being in a room with people and playing together, and that’s what kind of alienates people. Before you had to go to a record studio to make a record whereas now it seems that everybody just records at home so people don’t really play together and… I think it’s weird. Music should be a social thing even if it’s one to one.
How it has been creating, once again, new music for Team Sleep? I guess things must be a little bit different since 2003, 2004.
It’s a little bit different, but not that much. There’s so much convenience in the world now that it kind of makes it harder, in a weird way… I don’t know, it seems so much focused on like what gear you’re using, or whatever. For me, when I had a four-track and I would just plug it and play music. I think I was playing more music back then, but I’m more of an adult now. For all of us, in the band, our lives have changed. When the band first started I lived with Chino and we were kids who would spend all day just learning how to play guitar, for example. After the record came out I went to graduate school, I lived in China for a while, I was doing this, I was doing that, and it was like… In terms of making music it’s easier for us to send music to each other.
You announced the release of a series of studio EPs. What can you tell us about that?
I think there’s kind of two different things. It’s going to be a bunch of studio material. There’s stuff really focused on drum machine, melodies, and with vocals on it – that will be more like the first Team Sleep’s record. We got like five or six songs that we’re trying to figure it out each ones we will use, and then… But the vibe is still kind of the same. Then we’ve got about another fifteen or twenty songs that are kind of up in the air. So, we have the first EP kind of figured it out and then we’re thinking what’s going to be on the second one. I’m actually going to Chino’s house next week to work on some more stuff out there. We’re kind of trying to build a bakery. Instead of saying that we’re going to release three EPs we are trying to say that we’re going to release a new EP every six months, or something like that.
You guys share a love for the Bad Brains and they were, last month, participating in a Woodstock Sessions in-studio recording experience. Did you have the opportunity of witnessing that?
No, unfortunately I had to work so I couldn’t be there. But Darryl [Jenifer] from the Bad Brains, the bass player, came to ours. Oh man, I was nervous. Darryl and Dr. Know [guitarist for the Bad Brains], they both live in Woodstock so in the day of the session Chino and I, we both went to Doc’s work and we got to hang out with them. That was really cool. [pause] That was the band Chino and I used to listen to when we were kids, you know what I mean? Hanging out with those dudes and have Darryl come to the show… It was so cool.