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Grateful Dead Drummer: In the Key of Kreutzmann
Once known as the most obscure member of the Grateful Dead, rhythm-maker Bill Kreutzmann is a man with many hats. After a 30-year career with the Bay Area’s longest-running psychedelic rock band, and following the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995, the drummer seemed to have disappeared off the map and onto the Hawaiian coast, where he spent the better part of the last decade following his other passion as a digital artist. Popping up here and there for an occasional tour with the Other Ones, the Dead, and a 2006 run with the Rhythm Devils, it wasn’t until last year that Kreutzmann jumped back into music full-force with a band of his own design. Lately, the co-composer of Dead staples “Dark Star” and “The Other One” has been infused with a renewed passion as a musician. Or, as he relates: “Right now, I’m playing music like crazy with all kinds of people. That hunger or something bit my ass again to go out and play.” Kreutzmann’s new trio, BK3, is a musical force to be reckoned with. Featuring guitarist Scott Murawksi from Max Creek and bass guitarist Oteil Burbridge (or, alternately, bass guitarist James “Hutch” Hutchinson), the trio is Kreutzmann’s belated answer to RatDog, Phil Lesh & Friends, and the Global Drum Project—the post-Grateful Dead musical offspring of his band mates. Relaxing at his home on Kauai, Kreutzmann took some time to answer a few questions while packing his bags for a tour with his new trio, followed by rehearsals for the Dead’s spring tour.
Crawdaddy!: With your new trio, how did you come up with the name “BK3″?
Bill Kreutzmann: [Dead lyricist] Robert Hunter suggested that we should call our band “Three,” but there are a lot of other bands out there that have been called that, so I just put my initials in front of the “Three.” And “BK3″ is kind of cool, I mean, that’s what we are. We are a trio. One name came our way from a great friend, Col. Bruce Hampton. He’s a good friend of mine and he said, “You should call yourselves ‘The Egyptian Windmill Operators.’” [laughs]. But it’s kind of long, so “BK3″ works well.
Crawdaddy!: The rumor was that you met Scott Murawski through Mike Gordon in Costa Rica. What was the occasion?
Kreutzmann: To do a benefit for the educational system in this surf town called Jaco. They really need money for their school system, so Mike set up a benefit. The guitar player was Scott Murawski, and, of course, Mike played bass and I played drums—a trio again. We had such a wonderful night. There was no time limit and we played for five or six hours that night, and the next day I asked them, “Would you like to make this a band?” Mike, he had to apologize, he said, “I can’t, Bill, because I have my own band,” which I didn’t know, or I wouldn’t have asked. So I went home slightly rejected, thinking, “God, this was so much fun, I don’t want to leave this alone.”
Crawdaddy!: Sounds amazing. But despite Gordon opting out, you still pulled it together with Murawski.
Kreutzmann: I felt really great about playing with Scott. For me, he’s the first guitar player that really jumps in there and plays like Jerry—not in style, but with his endless imagination and his great contrast to the solo. He loves to turn corners so fast, and you can do that in a trio. And I can’t tell you how high I am on Oteil Burbridge. He makes any drummer sound good. They’re both great guys. I’m really happy that I’m finally getting into a band with just three guys. And we haven’t been together for 35 years.
Crawdaddy!: The trio formula seems like a perfect fit for you. Do you play in any others?
Kreutzmann: Well, I’ve been playing with Papa Mali a lot. That’s another band that happens to be a trio. We use Matt Hubbard, the keyboard player from Willie Nelson’s band. I met Papa Mali at this last Oregon Country Fair, and we closed the show on Sunday night. We played from about one to four in the morning, and we got great reports back. People really enjoyed it. And then, this last New Year’s, I played over on Maui with him. We did two shows on Maui. We’ll probably be playing with him in June.
Crawdaddy!: Rumor has it that you play with a bunch of different musicians in Hawaii.
Kreutzmann: I have the hottest garage bands that you’ve ever heard in your life. There are very few venues on Kauai, and the ones that are there, you’ve gotta play soft. There’s only one venue that you can play hard, a place called Trees. I played there last Friday night with a wonderful bass player from Alaska named Milo Matthews. He plays really good funk bass and he can swing right into jazz. I’ve found these great musicians that like to come here around this time of year. He spends three months out of the year down here with us.
Crawdaddy!: What was the occasion for the gig at Trees?
Kreutzmann: Dan Parslow, who’s the guitar player in that band, it was his 40th birthday. Dan is a really well-known guitar player on the island. So it was a birthday party, and I wanted to play because I just love to play. The show sold out and there were even people dancing outside.
13 Comments
This is a really nice, rare chance to hear what Bill Kreutzmann has to say about his new and old musical experiences. Thanks so much for the peak into Bill The Drummer’s world! http://darkstarjamblog.blogspot.com
Do your homework, sir. Kreutzmann was given an extended credit for writing Dark Star since it was an improvisational piece that all of the GD members “wrote” differently each time they played it, but he really had nothing to do with the reality of the song’s genesis. Phil’s book SEARCHING FOR THE SOUND: MY LIFE WITH THE GRATEFUL DEAD (2005) directly conflicts with this claim of yours, as do countless other sources.
fantastic article!
Hi Dave28 aka “Grand trivia poobah of all things Dead”, the last time I checked, and including Lennon/McCartney, if a band member is listed in the songwriting credits, he/she is “co-writer” of said song. According to your theory, since Darkstar is an “improvisational” piece, shouldn’t Bill then be listed in all the Dead’s songwriting credits? The next time I need to “Ask an expert” on everything Dead-related (and all things not), I’ll be sure to ring you up. You are, after all, a walking-talking encyclopedia.
Corbett, get off your high horse. Dave is right and your bratty little response only demonstrates how little you know about songwriting, as does your laughable comment about Lennon/McCartney. The lump sum of their tunes were written almost exclusively by one and then sometimes tweaked by the other. Thier partnership was designed to allevaite potential ego and legal problems and it worked great for years…but it doesn’t mean that they wrote the tunes together. They did NOT.
As with the Dead. Dark Star is largely, as with most of the best Dead tunes, the alchemy of Hunter’s unmatched poetic lyrics and Garcia’s sense of melody. Lesh says in his book that the riff is partially his. That Kreutzman gets co-composer status is probably largely due to his wanting more royalties, as with other band members when they saw Jer’s bigger checks coming in (confirmed by most of the best Dead biographies).
So, decent article, but your knowledge of the Dead is indeed a joke compared to someone like Dave, so shut your mouth and accept your shortcomings. Lennon/McCartney wrote everything together? Ho ho, what a genius you are.
And for the record, though Bill comes off as a sweetheart in this piece, he was probably the biggest dick in the Dead. I spent a lot of years touring with the band and saw first-hand what a coked-out, nasty drunk he was much of the time in their middle years. He also cheated like hell on his wife every night with as many groupies as he could lure into his hotel room. Just for the record.
And yeah, you really ought to consult any expert on the Dead, ’cause you sure as hell ain’t one.
Aha, I see we have two Grand Poobahs of Dead Trivia, the second being even more thoroughly ironic than the first, and likely suffering with a short-person complex to boot. Your point is no more valid than Dave’s. If you really wanna engage, why don’t you come at me with some hard, intelligent data. By all appearances, you’re one of those Deadheads that’s seen 3,496 shows and has the ticket stubs to prove it. Your mud slinging about Bill doesn’t impress me any more than your weak defense of the other trivia guy. Christ, all these experts! When will it end? Anyone else wanna try?
for a bunch of peace-lovin’ beatniks, you guys sure do use some harsh language at each other.
To Tazo: Thank you SO MUCH for your stellar observation. You know, I breeze thru the most popular Dead forums on occasion, and I’ve noticed over and over this clique of mean-spirited people who use these venues to spew out this nasty energy that comes from god-knows-where. And I’m specifically talking about the digital Dead scene, peace-niks or not. When Ryan Adams played with Phil Lesh at Red Rocks a few years back, there was so much poison in Lesh’s forum about Adams that Phil himself almost shut the forum down permanently, shocked at some of the sheer ugliness that emanated from some of these haters. Someone even slandered his wife in such a lewd manner, that one wondered if we’d returned to the Paleolithic epoch. In cyberspace in general, these forums are a great place to debate and stir thought, but there are always those who have to bring in this bizarre negativity, and then more follow suit, and then soon, the whole discussion slips into a grotesque and repulsive product of dark-hearted and cruel intent. It spreads quickly like the disease of road-rage, contaminating the entire environment. What all this stems from we’ll leave to C.G. Jung’s next-generation disciples, but man, you hit it right on the nose. Nobody’s guilty, ya know. We’re all innocent. And I’m merely the Devil’s advocate. But what a puzzling phenomenon, this whole forum-tainting business.
Well, I’d say the orignal negativity started with BC here; Dave merely said, “Do your homework”, and then even added, “sir.” Seems pretty darn polite, especially compared to BC’s subsequent insults. If you can’t publish an article without accepting some gently worded criticism, perhaps you should pursue other avenues of self-expression.
A great article about a wicked drummer. I especially liked the part about Bill and Jerry getting chased by sharks in Hawaii. Also, I have to agree with BC. Just saying ‘do your homework’ is arrogant and is hardly criticism. It’s like saying ‘you’re full of shit’. Dave’s argument is unfounded anyway. Technically Corbett is correct. Kreutzman’s mere contribution of the drums to Dark Star makes him a ‘co-composer’. He’s also listed in the song credits. So what is there to argue about? Corbett didn’t mention anything about the ‘genesis’ of the song, so what’s Dave even talking about? Dave even says Kreutzman was given an ‘extended credit’, so he even agrees with BC! Its obvious that Dave only took the opportunity to try to impress everyone at the interviewer’s expense by twisting the meaning of a single word for his own purposes. Corbett is correct and the point is moot. Who cares about semantics anyway. Excellent interview!
“do you homework, sir” is about the most condescending thing ever. hardly nice.
but ANYWAY, this is a fantastic interview and a great talent.
We camp at the Oregon Country Fair with Bill and Papa Mali. They are both fantastic gentlemen and musicians. After playing hand drums on the bus with Bill, I showed my daughter (5 at the time) my Dead records. She asked if she was in the band! I told BIll about this later and “Yeah, she’s in.”
Billy was given writing credits for Darkstar as the song came out of freeform improvisation on a one chord riff by Jerry Garcia. All the members are credited with writing though because the final song was a result of the contributions of all the members, Bill, Pigpen, Bob, Phil, and Robert Hunter who wrote the lyrics. The Other One too came out directly as a consequence of Bill and the other members of the Grateful Dead playing around with time signatures/rhythms, jamming in other words. Bills drumming made a direct contribution to the composition of the song and he is given writing credit on two of the four sections. Jerry wrote Cryptical Envelopment, the intro part, and TC wrote the last part entitled We Leave The Castle. I’m talking about the studio version of the song which was divided up to give the members more royalties. King Crimson did the same thing on their debut album.
Let’s put it another way, the drumming on The Other One is integral to the song and was not nor could it have been written by non-drummers.
To Old School DH – I’ve only seen Bill in interviews or read interviews with him and he comes across as a
jovial, sweetly goofy guy. Which is probably his real nature. I know of very few people who are fun to be around when drunk and coked up. That garbage messed up my own band until we decided to stop with the drugs.