Assembly of Dust returned home from its most recent tour and found itself answering questions virtually no folk-infused rock band has had to answer. The buzz surrounding the eight-show run with JJ Grey & MOFRO wasn’t necessarily about the quality of the music or the sad frequency of collaborations, but rather the bizarre backstage skirmish that followed the band’s gig at The Roxy in Boston.

If you’re picturing frontman Reid Genauer standing over the Roxy’s manager like Muhammed Alitriumphantly towering over Sonny Liston, repeating That’s folkin’ rock, motherfucker, that’s the taste of singer-songwriter fists of fury over and over, then, well, you’re probably alone. So for the real story, and for much more from the tour and beyond, Genauer and I both took some time from our day jobs to discuss Assembly of Dust’s mini-tour with JJ Grey & MOFRO.
The reported ‘fight’ was only a small part of the story, and in the course of a half-hour we discussed some more pertinent topics, including but not limited to Radiohead’s label-less album, the reunion of the original members of Strangefolk at their tour manager’s recent wedding, the experience of an asskicking in business school, the joy of fatherhood, the awesomeness of chick books and much more. It’s unabridged, so make yourself comfortable, but it’s a great read ...

AC: First things first, what are your quick impressions of the AoD/MOFRO mini-tour?

RG: The tour went great. Being in a band is like being on a sports team. You wind up being almost competitive, or at least super-analytical about the bands that you play with. And I really enjoyed watching MOFRO and enjoyed their music and was proud to be on the bill with them. That’s always a nice way to start.

AC: Any favorite shows or venues?

RG: Not surprisingly for us, I think Burlington was really [the best], which was the last show too, which was nice. It was just a super high-energy show. It’s so cliché to talk about the interplay between the audience and the band, but it’s impossible to deny that. It’s not so much the size of the crowd as the intensity of the crowd that really gets you off.

AC: And how did it come about that you and MOFRO found each other to go out on tour?

RG: I don’t even really know, I think through our agents. We had gone out with Honkytonk Homeslice last fall and had had a really good experience and thought it’d be neat to try something close to that same formula again. Truth be told, we had kind of hoped for and expected a little more collaboration than actually went down, but to each their own. I think they have a little bit more of a set set, and so it leaves a little less room for that. I think it’s an ethos really. Most bands, in fact, are kinda like Eh, not really that interested in having somebody else come up and muck up our set. But within the world that we live in, it’s sort of status quo.

AC: Yeah, I loved the Victor Wooten sit-in with AoD down at Langerado

RG: Oh yeah, that was so cool. That was SO cool. I was just up there that was definitely in some ways surreal. A, because he’s so great, and B, I remember reading an article about Bela Fleck & the Flecktones in high school in Rolling Stone actually there was a big spread. And that’s how I got turned onto them, oddly enough, Rolling Stone of all places. So it was cool.

AC: I have to ask what happened in Boston on this tour

RG: (Laughter) It was so comical. Basically The Roxy is a dance club called Pure, and they really don’t care about live music. I think they just do it as a way of adding a few dollars to the night’s bar draw. I think the same thing happened the last time we played there, but not quite as dramatic. We were done for 10 minutes, and I was out front signing autographs and such, and there were a few people that I wanted to bring backstage. I had asked three people [that worked there], the last one being the manager, and in fairness I said it was four people, and it was eight people. But it’s not like I had a herd of buffalo I was trying to bring backstage and it was eight people I knew well.
The band was quietly sitting backstage, having a drink, girlfriends, wives, I think one of our crew’s parents were even there. So the guy comes running up and says, You said four, and this is not four.And I was like, Well, it’s eight. And he’s like, You took advantage of me, so everybody out. I just said, Look we just got off the stage, and he said, I don’t care. He was just looking for a reason to be pissed at us. Everybody out. I just looked him flat in the face and said No. He said I’m the manager, and I said I’m the lead singer, and then it escalated from there.
I definitely am not embarrassed, because I was in the right. That said, had I been a little more diplomatic about it instead of just flat-out saying No, I probably could have avoided the whole thing. If nothing else, it was just really comical. And what happened today, actually is my sister-in-law sent a message to me and my wife saying Hey, I just read that Reid got kicked out of one of his own shows, and I hadn’t mentioned anything to my wife about it. I got busted! She sent me an e-mail saying What the hell did you do?!

AC: Well, we’ll put in a bad word for the Roxy on the site. Anyway, we just kind of touched on Bela Fleck and Victor Wooten what kind of bands, new or old bands, are you listening to these days?

RG: For me, there’s three buckets, if you will. There’s the classic rock, which is the stuff that growing up in the ’80s was my bread and butter, and that’s all the obvious stuff I always talk about: Crosby Stills and Nash, Allman Brothers, Neil Young, Grateful Dead, Paul Simon, just all these amazing songwriters and musicians. So that’s Bucket One, and I always go back to that well.
Bucket Two would be the Jerry Douglases, the Bela Flecks, the Bill Frisells, the John Scofields, and lumped in with them I would put, and I don’t really know a ton about jazz, but I do listen to Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans just feats of genius on their instruments. And I really like instrumental music, and I respect amazing musicianship.
Bucket Three would be like current bands that are about and out that I dig. I really was blown away by The Slip’s last album, so I’ve listened to that quite a bit. They pulled a 180 I guess it wasn’t a 180, but they pulled a 90 at least. It was, in my estimation, such a flawlessly recorded and well-written album. I love Gillian Welch for similar reasons. I just find her so credible artistically and emotionally credible is the best way to describe her. I really like Josh Rouse’s stuff a lot. I’ve always been a big fan of Drew Emmitt and Leftover Salmon again, great songwriting, great playing.
And the list goes on and on in the indie rock world, I really like the New Pornographers. I actually like AC Newman’s solo stuff better than the New Pornographers for some reason. I really do enjoy MOFRO’s music. I like Jonah Smith, who’s a Relix favorite; he’s a great songwriter and they have a great band.

AC: You forget sometimes how people can just absolutely floor you…

RG: Yeah, it’s weird. John Leccesse, the bass player in Assembly of Dust, made this comment recently, and it seemed to sum it up, which is, they’re so many bands that, and even within in the grassroots scene, I’m not saying pop bands, I’m saying bands in indie rock and jambands and singer/songwriter, cross genres, that about so much about style and not about substance. And maybe they just fit they sound like, they look like, they feel like, and that’s really the primary thing that people react to.
And then there’s this whole other class of bands that are just so substantive and really lacking style. If you ever heard Bill Frisell speak on some of his live performances, it’s like, I’m not sure if there’s anybody even home. It’s clear he doesn’t want to speak, and yet his music is so substantive. I don’t know how you rectify that issue, or maybe you never do, but as a musician, and even just as a fan, it’s a frustrating conundrum.

AC: I saw your former Strangefolk bandmate Erik Glockler played with Assembly of Dust some time this summer, sparking this kind of small remembrance that there used to be a Strangefolk. Playing with him, or anyone from those days, are there pangs to play again, like would you ever want to play some shows here and there with the old band?

RG: You mean, like, do I want to have The Police reunion? (Laughter)
I love seeing those guys, and it’s really cathartic in some ways to have them come out, and be able to spend time with them, and to just be able to re-live all the great times we had without all the intensity of the moment. I saw them all recently at a wedding, and we actually played as the original Strangefolk at the wedding. Andre Gardner was our tour manager for all those years, and he got married, and so we played his first dance and then a small set. That was the first time we’ve played together in a long, long time, probably since 2002 or so. That was neat.
We had such a great time together and just really lived the Great American Dream together. Or not the Great American Dream, but I don’t know what it was. It was like Jack Kerouac-style. For me, Strangefolk is a coming-of-age story. When I write my autobiography, that’ll be the coming-of-age years.

AC: How does someone go from Strangefolk to business school?

RG: Not easily, I’ll tell you that, not easily. It’s funny because it’s always a topic of intrigue. I think a lot of people sort of scratch their heads, like, Why’s this kinda artsy fartsy, Birkenstock-wearing tofu eater going to business school? I think a lot of the stereotypes about business school are accurate, it’s a lot of really serious guys who want to go work on Wall Street or whatever. But there’s also a lot of really creative people there that want to start funky businesses or go into the World Bank or whatever, and to Cornell’s credit, they are really attentive about making sure that the fiber of the class has a good portion of these sort of outliers, and I certainly was one.
It was by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done, emotionally and intellectually, just a total asskicking. And truthfully I hated it. But it was one of the most enlightening things I’ve ever done. Contrary to the preconceived notion, it’s not just about sitting there and learning how to do accounting. I met just raging intellects and intensely creative and motivated people, and it was just really inspiring. So it might be hard for some people to digest exactly why I did it or what went down, it kind of rounded me as a person, and it’s something I’ll always I don’t know if cherish is the word but I’ll always feel good about doing.

AC: So you go from there to eMusic, and you get Assembly of Dust underway. How did you feel about trying to start this new band and growing it, having so recently coming out of Strangefolk, minus the business school intermezzo?

RG: It was weird in some ways. Certainly I had anxiety about it, whether or not people would dig it, whether or not people would come, and how the guys from Strangefolk would feel. I’m sure they felt there was an element of fuck you in it, and truthfully there was. But not a lot.
It was just I needed to do my own thing, and it turned out I honestly thought when I left Strangefolk that I’m done. I just couldn’t take the insanity any more. It’s just a roller coaster being a musician you’re on the line all the time. There’s all these people criticizing you, or not. There’s all this anxiety about how many records you’re going to sell and how many people are going to come to the show. It wears on you. I think the line, Sometimes the lights are shining on me, other times I can barely see is so apropos. That describes being a musician in two phrases. So I really thought I was done. And it just turned out that it was just part of the fiber of who I was, and I guess I probably innately or subconsciously knew that, but I figured it out the hard way.
To paraphrase somebody else, I saw Bruce Springsteen interviewed on 60 Minutes last week. Believe it or not, I’m not a huge Springsteen fan I mean, I totally respect the guy, how could you not? But he just doesn’t do it for me musically.

AC: He’s actually my uncle.

RG: Really?

AC: Nah, I’m just kidding.

RG: They were talking about it, and the interviewer was like, You gotta be worth over $100 million, why do you continue to do this? And he went through the list: It gives my life meaning, it’s part of who I am, the feeling of creating joy in the audience or emotional reaction from the audience, blah blah blah. And it was just like, thank you, he said it. So that’s kind of the way it is for me, it’s just part of my genetic makeup I guess, or maybe I’m just a junkie for it.

AC: Well, we all need to be junkies for something. So your last album was released early on eMusic how’d you find that worked out for you, and will you continue to do that for subsequent albums?

RG: I don’t really have a strong point of view either way about it. I think what Radiohead is doing is totally cool.

AC: Have you listened to that album yet?

RG: No, not yet. But I did go to the site today just to start getting myself ready, figuring out what my bid is. But I don’t have really have a strong perspective on that. I do know more broadly that record sales are not ever gonna be what they were. I’m a proponent of letting people tape our shows, and I love archive.org. So I have a pretty liberal view on it, but the challenge is, there are a lot of guys out there that are trying to make a living. So somebody’s gotta come up with a way to allow that, because Radiohead, for example, probably wouldn’t be around if EMI hadn’t given them a five- or six-record deal.
This is kind of a rhetorical question, but how does music get funded, how does it get made? Maybe the answer is that celebrity celebredom doesn’t exist, and it’s a bunch of smaller acts. But even that is a challenge, because I think a lot of people hone their craft when they’re fully submersed in it. I’m just using Radiohead as an example, I don’t know really know their music that well, but I imagine a lot of the continuity and the genius that came out, came after years of baking themselves in their own stew, if you will. And if you’re only visiting it once in a while, how do you get greats like Radiohead and Bruce Springsteen? I don’t know. It’s a shitshow. It is a shitshow.

AC: Let me switch gears again I thought the Gathering of the Vibes solo set you played in 2002, if I may cloak my objectivity here for a minute, was one of the most fucking perfect acoustic sets of music I’ve ever heard. Do you have these yens to do get out and do some more solo shows?

RG: Yeah, I like it. And that is a show that I’m proud of it was a defining moment. Kind of like an I’m here to stay kind of thing. That might be why it was what it was; there was a lot riding on it. Yes, I like it, and I’d like to do more of it, whether it’s incorporating it into the AOD set or solo shows or whatever. In fact, it’s something I discussed recently, and I would like to do more of it.
The flip side to that though, is I was talking about the anxiety and the exposure of being an artist, and the solo thing is like 10 times worse. Part of what I love about playing in a band is the camaraderie, first of all, before during and after the show. And then secondly, you’re part of a team that’s going out there, so it’s not like you’re laying your soul and self out on the line. You can hide behind each other a little bit and rely on each other. It’s risk and reward, I guess.

AC: You’d rather be more a Jeter than a Federer. Well, we talked about Vibes and Langerado how do you find the festival circuit, and what’s the best festival you’ve played, not even as it relates to your set?

RG: It’s hard to say, and it’s hard to separate it out from our set, because your experience as a musician is colored by your set. Again, it’s sort of cliche answer, but one of the greatest festival experiences we had was playing Bonnaroo. Before I said it’s not the quantity of the crowd, it’s the quality, and for whatever reason, that was a very intense crowd. Every hair on my body was standing on end. But it’s a really hard question to answer, because I’ve played that festival once, and every year the Gathering of the Vibes has been special for me.I feel like part of something there, whereas I felt like a visitor at Bonnaroo.
And then from an sheerly aesthetic point of view and I don’t mean that just visually, I mean like contextually the Strawberry Festival in California is unbelievable. It’s in the foothills of Yosemite; we stayed in a log cabin looking out over Half Dome, or one of the domes. There are people who’ve been coming there for 25 years, who’ve raised their kids there. It’s definitely a different beast than Bonnaroo or Gathering of the Vibes or Wakarusa or 10,000 Lakes. It’s an adult version of those, but it’s just a really special thing. People are so respectful of each other, of where they are, of the music, and again I felt like a visitor into this weird little bubble, but it was just intriguing. We’ve played there twice and both times I came away feeling that way.

AC: Alright, one last query: What outside of this music world piques your interest you watch TV, you see movies,you read books, what’s on your agenda?

RG: The first is I have a one-and-a-half year old, so he at this point in my lifetakes up a lot of my spare time. It’s an unexpected pleasure, you know. It’s a total ass-kicking, but it’s sublime to watch mini-me run around and discover the world, and I feel like I’m seeing the world through his eyes, so that is just phenomenal. Prior to having a son I did like to read novels a lot, for the same reason I love music: the escapism of it. It’s just so calming to immerse yourself in somebody else’s drama.

AC: Who do you read?

RG: It’s funny, I’d say and it’s not particularly sophisticated the one I’ve the read the most of is Ken Follett. He’s got a formula, it’s basically intrigue. His best book is called Pillars of the Earth. I’ve read the run of the mill intrigue novels; I like big epics, so that’s how I got into Ken Follett Pillars of the Earth is like 1,500 pages. But then there’s Lonesome Dove, there’s Mists of Avalon, of course Lord of the Rings, that are all sort of these epic tales. And then, I don’t know if it’s because I get a lot of my recommendations from my grandmother, but I’ve read a lot of somewhat chick-ish book club books. But most of them are really literature, and the subject matter is not always, like, you know, uh

AC: I got my first period today.

RG: Right right. Like, The Kite Runner was a bustout from that genre. That’s a very well-known one, but there’s hundreds like that that are less well-known.

AC: Well, let’s leave it at talk of first periods. I think you’ve exhausted me for now, and I’ll let you get back to work.