My Denton Music interview: Snarky Puppy’s Mike League

by Michal Garcia of My Denton Music

Editor's note: Click here to listen to the audio of the interview.

My Denton Music: Mike League is the bandleader of Snarky Puppy, a large instrumental ensemble with three studio albums under its belt and a number of tours throughout the United States and Canada. Today we're talking about the band and featuring their latest album Bring Us The Bright. Say hey Mike.

League: Hey, I'm Michael League from Snarky Puppy. Thanks for having me.

My Denton Music: How does your music come about? How do you go about actually writing and some of your influences and how you run your rehearsals?

League: Each tune, you know the band itself is so eclectic that I guess it makes sense that the tunes come from different people in the group. Mostly me, but almost everybody in the group has written something for it. And you know, being different kinds of instrumentalists, different tunes are written on different instruments you know that has a lot to do with it. I play bass in the group but I still write most of the music on guitar or piano, some on bass, so that kind of determines which kind of direction the music goes and you know and because we're not kind of pigeon-holed in a genre there's kind of like a you know limitless potential for which direction the music can go, especially stylistically from Brazilian to Klezmer to Hip-hop to jazz you know.

My Denton Music: Can you talk about some of the day-to-day creativity, like what happens on a daily basis with you personally and then with the band?

League: Yeah, you know It's such an ordeal getting so many people together you know to play. We never tour with less than seven people and most of the time and most of the time it's closer to nine or ten. So, everything has to be planned pretty far in advance, which means I'm booking tours about six to eight months before they happen. And with that kind of planning period, normally there's kind of you have the luxury of not having to be playing you know like not having to be rehearsing everyday, not having to worry about...you know, you just kind of coordinate everybody's schedules well in advance and then everybody comes in and do their thing until rehearsals start. The downside of that is that there's less pressure on me to consistently write music you know. So for me, everything kind of happens in...creatively things happen in droughts and downpours you know. So I'll go like five, six months without writing a tune and then I'll write six of seven tunes in a month you know.

My Denton Music: Maybe it's that pressure of a deadline.

League: And which a good thing you know, it's a good thing you know. This last record we did I didn't write music for like fourteen months before that record. In between the two, the second record my third album "Bring Us the Bright" I didn't - I don't think I wrote a single tune. And then, you know, right before we toured I wrote a bunch of music and then we played it on the tour and then we recorded it. And since that record came out, I guess we recorded it in the summer or actually in April. It came out in the fall. But since then, I haven't written a song. So I've gotta start writing music again. Actually I started writing one on the way here, the first one of I think for the new record.

My Denton Music: Tell me a little bit about some of these logistics with you know I know the guitarist Bob Lanzetti (or one of the guitarists) and trumpeter Mike Maher are up in New York at least most of the time. How does that work out with being able to get them down here for recordings or going up there for tours and where do some of these guys hail from? Where are they from?

League: Well, Bob lives in New York, Mike lives in New York and Bill [Laurance], our pianist, lives in London - or in Leeds in England you know. So, it's not ultra-convenient but it's worth having musicians that get along well together and play well together and understand the music. Basically you know, like I said we are kind of like a, we're like the Costco or Priceclub or Sam's club of band's to where we do just everything in bulk, like in a condensed...you know what I mean? It makes it easier 'cause I can just fly them down once and then we can tour for a month and a half, do a record, spend two months together and then fly 'em home. You know, it's not like they have to be around like we're rehearsing every week. We don't rehearse every week. We only rehearse leading up to tours and records. So you know, logistically it's just kind of a bullet that has to be bitten. We just, you know, fly 'em down.

My Denton Music: And you mentioned earlier before the interview started, you were just in the UK recording an album with Bill Laurance. Tell us about it.

League: Well Bill has worked with lots of pop groups, you know, like funk group like "The New Mastersounds" and "Eddie Roberts," Roughneck and stuff but he's also has played with a really popular English Band called "Morcheeba" a very international famous group. And, he himself is a great singer and songwriter and although most of what he's made his living doing has been instrumental music he just decided that now's the time to do a vocal album, you know, singer-songwriter material, kind of like a combination of rock and folk. He's got a very unique style of playing piano and that's definitely really dominant on the record and so yeah I went over there and recorded with him and a drummer from france named Laurent Robin. He's kind of one of the bigger jazz drummers in France, so it was a blast.

My Denton Music: Tell us a little bit about some of your other members, like for example Sput and Bernard Wright. I know they have their own history like totally away from Snarky Puppy and then it seems like this kind of collision of musical world's that's come about.

League: Yeah, that's exactly what it is. That's the identity of the band right now I think the band has undergone a lot of changes since it started as just a bunch of middle class, white, college jazz musicians you know? Now I think the sound of the band is a cultural collision you know? We've got Bernard Wright, who is a you know music legend - he's recorded with Miles Davis, Marcus Miller, Chaka Khan, Roberta Flack, Sly & Robbie - bunch of different genres, you know he's Yoda to us and kind of the patriarch in a way, even though he doesn't always tour with us you know, but...so he's in his forties you know, and then we've got like Bobby Sparks and Robert "Sput" Searight" who are in their 30s you know, me too, under Bernard but have you know definitely made their names playing church music.

But also you know, Bobby also plays with Tower of Power, Roy Hargrove's RH factor and has been Marcus Miller's regular keyboard player for a very long time. And Sput won a grammy as a teenager I think for Gospel stuff, for God's Property, he founded the group "God's property." Since then he's played with Snoop Dogg and Erykah Badu and Celine Dion and Cher and you know I mean, as a drummer and a keyboardist. And those guys are kind of, you know, grew up in the black church scene and have made their living playing predominantly black music you know just like Bernard. And then there's kind of the third tier of musicians which is kind of like the ex-college folks from North Texas, and I think Bill is kind of the odd man out in England. But you know, from different places all over the country and different kind of cultural and you know geographical backgrounds, so it's kinda yeah, this is a weird little mixture of people you know. But, a lot of different musical interests represented and a lot of different cultural interests represented and I think that has combined to make the sound of the group as worldly as it is.

My Denton Music: After this next question we'll stop the name-dropping section of the Snarky Puppyness and get into maybe a little bit of playing. But tell us a little bit about, I know you guys did in your 2000...sorry, 2007-2008 tour schedule you played with a whole lot of people. Victor Wooten, Oso Closo, Mingo Fishtrap and Ari [Hoenig]. Talk to me a little bit about these collaborations and how did you get to know these people? How is it that you book all this stuff all over the place?

League: You know, I think like anything else it's a snowball, it's a slow-moving snowball. When we first started playing, we were just playing in Denton and co-billing with local acts and then a friend of ours who had a connection with a venue got us a gig with Victor Wooten - kind of a one-off show in Dallas where we opened for him. And, it was a really amazing experience. It was our first show in front of more than a thousand people you know, it was a blast and we had a great time, and a lot of things sprung from that and you know I would say that was the first really jumping point for the group you know. The diving board or whatever, and from that you know we got more connections and respect in Dallas and DFW, Dallas and Denton and that coupled with just playing frequent shows in Denton kind of around our home, like our fan base, our fan base started to grow and music started sounding better.

And then just like one by one kind of I reached out to lots of musicians I admired like Ari Hoenig and Henry Hey who runs a band called Rudder with Keith Carlock and Tim La Fefebvre, Chris Cheek. And different people like that. Folks from Mingo Fishtrap, and kind of one by one we were able to work it out to where we could play gigs together in different towns you know and just kind of created different relationships with them. I mean really all the people really care about like that you know I mean these people, some of these people were like my jazz idols or whatever you know, like Tim & Keith from Rudder and Ari Hoenig and John Ellis called me out of the blue one day because of saxophone player 'cause he had been talking to Ari, we had done a tour together. So it's kind of flipped around to where people are getting in touch with me instead of me having to get in touch with them, which is great.

But what I mean is that all these people, although they were kind of my idols, my heroes, for a while and they still are of course but all that anybody really cares about is being able to play music, you know, with other people that play well and are easy to get along with. There's really just two criteria you know, responsible slash easy to get along with. But so I mean, as a result we have a lot of...working in personal relationships with a lot of musicians that used to be kind of unattainably famous to us as jazz students you know, but really it's like they're just people that want to play great music and don't want drama, you know what I mean? And so if you can play a show with them and sound great, get their crowd exited about music before they go on, or after they go on and then show up on time, be friendly, you know it's just. It's all anybody really wants you know. It's kind of decelebritizes - if that's a word.

My Denton Music: Decelebritizes, I like that word.

League: It decelebritizes them, you know what I mean? You know, it's nice. And like I said, it's just a snowball. You meet, you get introduced to new webs of people and it's just it's kind of like a big tree with lots of branches.

My Denton Music: So, you're told us a little bit about the evolution of the group but can you go back, way back, to the olden days of...I remember you guys, you played the "Live at Uncommon Ground" recording. Uncommon Ground was the name of the coffee house in Denton and eventually your first studio album, "The Only Constant." So, connect me if you will from that sort of genesis of the group to about where you did just now.

League: You know, I started this group just as kind of like a forum just to get my tunes played and read and I just picked my, I had some pretty specific conceptual ideas and I picked my favorite players from the school you know, from the University of North Texas and I just kind of rounded them up and got them come over to my house and to play through some stuff and sounded good so we were like "we should do a gig" you know. We played a show at a little pizza place called J&J's pizza on the square in Denton and we had a really good crowd and a really great first experience for the group. So I figured we should pay somebody a couple hundred bucks to record us next time live so we can have something to maybe sell or have just as a document. So we played at a coffee house that's now...is it closed?

My Denton Music: Yeah, I think they moved.

League: Yeah, Or maybe it moved.

My Denton Music: Yeah, they sell Sushi now.

League: Coffee and sushi, that's weird. Called it uncommon ground, and we recorded it I guess that was two thousand...five? Do you know? Two thousand six? 2005....

My Denton Music: 2004 and a half!

League: Maybe it was 2004, it was a long time ago. We were all still in college, everybody in the group was still in college you know. So it was cool you know, I listened to it the first time a couple months ago for the first time in years and it was really interesting I mean it's amazing how much different you know the band is now I mean, how much different it is. Just conceptually, and just the sound and just the approach. It was way jazz, way more jazz than it is now.

My Denton Music: I know you got back some of your original players though, you had Mike St. Clair [trombonist] in it, but then you had Mike Maher [former and current trumpeter] in it too and now he's back although Jon Deitemeyer [drummer] plays with one of the guys you collaborate with.

League: Zach Brock? Yeah, Jon who was our first drummer went on to Chicago and is doing really great there and plays with a really great violinist named Zach Brock who's kind of the new jazz violin guy. He lives in New York, has a group called the Coffee Achievers. Zach Brock and the Coffee Achievers who are phenomenal. And Zach actually yeah, played all the violin, the lead violin stuff on our new record. So like I said that web you know, it's amazing, you can always connect everybody you know to a couple people. And we've got some cool shows coming up actually. In 2009, I know we're playing...doing a show in Denton with the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, who's been traveling a lot and really hitting it hard for 15 years.

My Denton Music: I saw them in New York. Have they ever played in Denton?

League: They did three or four years ago. This is gonna be their first time back in a long time. They played in Dallas with Stanton Moore recently, and then we're doing a show with Papa Grows Funk from New Orleans and I think we're gonna do one with Rebirth Brass Band in LaFayette, Louisiana. You know, but through all you know we've made all those connections through people that have played in the band or just friends of people that we know. You know, the group, as far as the evolution you know, there's probably forty five people who've recorded with Snarky Puppy and of them probably twenty five were members like full-time members at one point, you know. So it's a big family, big family.

My Denton Music: Well, why don't you play us one of the tunes from the CD or your rendition of it at this moment.

League: On solo bass...

My Denton Music: Or even, you can play us what is on your mind - what is Mike League thinking at this very moment?

League: Yeah, there's a tune. It's kind of become my favorite tune to play recently and I guess it's probably cliché for me to do it because it's by Jaco Pastorius. It's also one of the only tunes that you can really play, that I can really play on solo bass. it's called Continuum, it's off his solo record.

[Mike League plays Jaco Pastorius' "Continuum"]

My Denton Music: Great man! That's cool. What's next? You mentioned a tour and a new album. When will that actually come to fruition? Or what's the tentative plan? You're booking stuff a few months in advance.

League: Well yeah, we've got...we're doing some stuff in town in January and then we're doing some stuff in Louisiana during Mardi Gras. But our first real I guess, our next real excursion of 2009 is gonna be like late March through April. It's like a month and a half we're gonna do Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Virginia, DC, Delaware, New York, Massachusetts, Ontario, Quebec, Illinois, Wisconsin.

My Denton Music: Is there any plan to swim across the pond anytime soon?

League: Yeah, I mean we're definitely [laughs]...yeah...speaking of swimming across the pond I'm going to give a plug for my favorite beer in the world which is not, we're not sponsored by them although I'd love to be. Theakston's Old Peculiar. It's from Yorkshire in England. It's wonderful stuff. Yeah so, speaking of Theakston's I would love to get the band over there to drink it, in a pub very soon. We're working on stuff you know in France and England right now so we've got some kinda promoters that we're talkin' to but with this many people in the group it's kind of very difficult to make it happen. So, I'm hoping that we can do it by 2010 we'll be over there. So we'll see.

My Denton Music: Yeah, and for your last album [The World is Getting Smaller] you had a tune called "Intelligent Design" and not only did you record that for the album but you give did a remix, sort of like a rerecording on the John Lennon tour bus. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

League: Yeah, we were just asked by a representative at North Texas if we'd be interested in recording a tune on the John Lennon educational tour bus which is kind of like a moving recording - multimillion dollar recording studio. It's really amazing and so we had to record something quick so we kind of did a condensed version of the tune and it had been probably a year since we had done that record and the tune had changed quite a bit. So it was really interesting to get a new flavor on that song you know. But it was just a good means of publicity kind of and we met some really cool folks and the engineers on the bus were very cool you know and I've stayed in touch with them. They're great people. So yeah, you know it was interesting. It was parked you know in the middle of UNT's campus. It was kind of funny. Yeah, we had a blast.

My Denton Music: I think for some reason I was gone that week. Well, last time I saw you play was with Zach Brock and Jose Aponte and Bernard Wright, and there was some guy with melodica I recall.

League: That was yeah, Dana Sudborough, plays vibraphone in Dallas but he was just kinda, he actually didn't even tell me he was coming. He just kinda showed up and brought a melodica, so yeah that was really fun - forgot all about that.

My Denton Music: I got a chance to look at the recording studio where you guys recorded your latest album, tell me a little bit about that studio and just how many hours your spend in the studio recording and then mastering to actually make this "Bring Us the Bright" CD.

League: Man, in terms of time span, I work, you know I try to do-blow through the stuff as quickly as possible when it comes to just kind of the tediousness of we're making a record you know. But this one we took our time a little more with, I think we finished recording it by the end of April, maybe the beginning of May and it was out in September. So May-June-July I would say, it was like four months from the first moment of recorded material 'til the package, you know the CD was in our hands. But we went in a tracked the whole thing in 72 hours or 90 hours.

You know I mean, we did like two or three maybe a little more...it was like two or three full days of tracking and then and then the last day was hilarious. We had like gotten a deadline from the studio that they needed it available by like noon on a Saturday and so we ended up recording for like 24...24 straight hours...Cheers, Old Peculiar [Cheers beer with drummer Tony Spiro of Backside Pick]...Kind of 24 straight hours we had the whole band and we were just kinda doing overdubs and stuff so you know everybody was just sprawled out throughout the studio asleep and I'd wake them up one by one and have them go in and record whatever they needed to record, it was really funny!

So yeah, you know and then we mixed it with a really great engineer named Chris Godby who works for the hip factory in Miami but he came up to Dallas where he lives and he works with Tim Boland, he's Tim Boland's engineer, amazingly talented guy - just did the new Pussycat Dolls record and New Kid's On the Block, whatever that's worth. But yeah, you know he's awesome and so we spent probably a couple weeks mixing and sent it off to be...actually he mastered it. So I mean we did a, considering we did it very cheaply but we also took more time and spent more money than we had on the previous two albums.

My Denton Music: Very cool. This last part of the interview I want you to tell me the first thing or things you think of when I tell you these words here, so just hit me man. Who do you love?

League: Bernard Wright! Yeah, Bernard Wright yeah.

My Denton Music: Zach Brock.

League: Mmmm. Torch-bearer. The new violin torch bearer.

My Denton Music: Mini-moog. I think Bernard plays one of those

League: Yeah, I mean and Bobby I mean that's Bobby's weapon of choice. I would say an enduring instrument, that's what I would say. We want the most, it'll be around forever. It's an amazing...

My Denton Music: Cool. 34 Klezma.

League: I guess it would be, if we had a single from the new record that would be the single.

My Denton Music: Denton, DeN-ton for those non-dentonites.

League: De-un.

My Denton Music: De-un, Texas!

League: A biodome of creative potential...maybe?

My Denton Music: Greek Food.

League: Roots, my roots.

My Denton Music: Sitmom [Records, Snarky Puppy's record label]

League: [cat meows] That was my musical accompaniment on the...Sitmom, very Denton. I'll just say very Denton.

My Denton Music: Donomation.

League: It just makes me think about lots of funny things about [Brian, saxophonist]Donohoe. It would be the essence of Donohoe is what Donomation would be.

My Denton Music: Bring us the Bright

League: A new business card for Snarky Puppy. Snarky Puppy's new business card.

My Denton Music: Fair Play

League: Oh man, we need to play that one again. That what I think of the first thing that comes to my mind.

My Denton Music: Rubber Gloves.

League: Dirty, shitty, and awesome.

My Denton Music: Nice. Deep Ellum.

League: I hope that it will be a haven for creative arts again very soon. It's tryin' to get back there.

My Denton Music: Bill Laurance.

League: The Man. My best friend, and one of my favorite musicians.

My Denton Music: And, Snarky.

League: ...Puppy?

My Denton Music: ...Kitty?

League: Kitty? mew!

My Denton Music: Well, why don't you play us a tune to close us out - whatever's on your mind....fit into one and a half minutes.

League: How 'bout...oh, I don't think I can really...ok.

[Mike League plays "When the Saints go Marching In" with Tony Spiro on drums]

My Denton Music: Thanks Mike.

League: You're very welcome, thank you Michal.