By Josh Danson, BISS List Contributing Editor

*Originally published May 11th, 2020*

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I don’t remember much of my late 20’s. They occurred around the turn of the last millennium and coincided with my move from Manhattan to San Francisco. Some images and scenarios stand out, of course, but many are recollected through a filter of booze, late-night smoke-filled rooms and a background soundtrack of live music and drunken house-party banter. One memory that does persist through that haze is of a friend’s wedding in the redwoods of far-Western Sonoma County. They were some of the first among our group to make the leap and they decided to go big, hiring a band and booking most of the cabins at an (in)famous, primarily gay resort in Guerneville fittingly called, Woods. The band playing in front of the intimate wedding crowd that night was one of the hottest acts going and we were all excited to see them outside the city and hopefully get to party with them after. That band was Tea Leaf Green and I still remember the blissful scene they created amidst the towering redwoods that night as we danced with frenzied, reckless abandon to jams that seemed to hit heights as impossible as the treetops and the stars that shone through them.

Since then, many of us have gone on to settle down, get married, have kids, or otherwise find ways to reduce the number of late-night house parties we attend, but the music has remained a constant. Tea Leaf Green (TLG) have gone on to play some of the most storied venues in San Francisco and around the country, not to mention Jam Cruise and festivals from High Sierra to Bonnaroo, along with releasing nine studio albums and more than half a dozen live sides. The band has had some lineup changes over the course of the past 20+ years, but has settled into a groove with the latest lineup that now includes one of San Francisco’s most highly acclaimed younger players, bassist Eric DiBerardino. On April 24th, the band released Destination Bound (Surfdog 2020), its first new album in seven years and the first to feature DiBerardino.

Written and recorded before, but released during the height of the spring coronavirus outbreak, Destination Bound is, preternaturally, an album for our coronavirus-infected times, touching on themes of seeking shelter and security, finding a port in the storm and the importance of relationships and having a place to call home. The album is vital and pulsing with the essence of that which is Tea Leaf Green – rocking, rollicking, fun and smart – despite some physical distancing involved in its recording. The album came together when keyboard player and lead vocalist, Trevor Garrod, got together in the studio with Drummer Scott Rager after a long recording hiatus, as related via the band’s official announcement:

“Amidst growing families, jobs and personnel changes we started doing other things and took on responsibilities that kept us closer to home.

As keyboardist Trevor Garrod put it, ‘I kept on writing, mostly for myself. I’d catch a song in an evening with a bottle of wine or one would come around some Saturday morning while I was drinking coffee. I’d press them in the pages of my little notebook, where they would be forgotten in the drawer of my desk.’

Until one day, drummer Scott Rager called up Trevor and told him he’d booked some studio time and wanted to record an album of new songs.

Trevor opened the drawer of his desk, took out the little notebook and drove up to Oakland where they began to play through the songs, arrange them, and generally prepare to go into the studio.”

I recently spoke to TLG guitarist Josh Clark, who now resides in southern Oregon, about the SF music scene of the early 2000’s, the making of the new album, as well as family, fishing and the future of the music business.

BISS List: Congrats on the new album. Sounds like you guys were probably almost ready to go the usual route and go on tour in support of it when this whole shit show happened.

Josh Clark: Yeah, well some shows at least.

BISS List: Right, a little mini-tour or something, a few shows?

Josh Clark: Yeah. I’m still kind of a weekend-only guy with the age my kids are right now. And Trevor’s also holding down the ranch down there in Saratoga. So he’s kind of Monday-Friday working the farm and the horses. So you know, we’re just kind of waiting for that time. It would have been a great catalyst to try and make it happen. But yeah… now nothing’s going to happen.

BISS List: Yeah, this kind of put the kibosh on that, huh? So, when did you actually put the finishing touches on the album? And did this situation have any impact on the album or the release date? Or did that go according to plan, for the most part?

Josh Clark: It all just kind of happening simultaneously. We were definitely looking to release it when this happened. We were looking to do a release party and plan all that kind of stuff right around the time when all this happened. But it also happened with no foreseeable end, so then we’re holding on to it until, who knows? But if you listen to this record it’s really speaking to what’s happening right now in a lot of ways. It’s trippy. So we figured, let’s just get it out there.

BISS List: Yeah, for sure. It’s definitely seeming pretty prescient right now, or at least endowed with some added meaning. How have these last few months changed how you thought about going out on the road? Has it made you more excited to get back out there after being cooped up? Or has it made you more appreciative of what you have at home that much more?

Josh Clark: Well, you know, it’s sort of both. I’d love to play some shows. What really makes me want to play some shows is I’ve tried to do a couple of streaming shows, you know, like webcasts? And that really makes me miss my band!

BISS List: The solo shredding isn’t doing it for you?

Josh Clark: The 30-minute experimental solo shred? Yeah, it was fun, but… you know it’s great to perform stuff for an audience, especially new stuff, you know? To get out there, because everybody’s excited. And whenever we make a record, the first time we ever really hear these songs — especially for me living apart from the rest of the guys — is when we put them on the record. But when you get out there and you play them live and take them on a tour, that’s when they start to grow and take on their own lives and all sorts of things will start to surprise you. And some become like monsters, you know? So, that’s the exciting thing that I guess we’ll be missing out on for the time being. But they’ll still be new to us, when we do get back out there.

BISS List: Yeah, and new to the audiences. So those reactions will still be waiting out there.

Josh Clark: Yeah. Or, hopefully, the other effect could be that people have become totally familiar with the songs but nobody’s ever heard them live. That could be a pretty cool thing too.

BISS List: Totally. There’s all sorts of unintended consequences with this thing, like the boom in people livestreaming, you know? So maybe it IS actually a good time to put out an album now because people have got so much time on their hands. It’d be interesting to see how your downloads would have been if you hadn’t put it out during this time.

Josh Clark: Yeah, totally. It could have just gotten kind of lost in the shuffle in the midst of everybody’s busy life. So there are unintended consequences, or unintended blessings, I guess? That people’s lives are not so crazy right now. I mean, it’s stressful, but you also have this impulse to just simplify it all down a little bit. And it’s kind of amazing the part that technology plays in all of it. Now that we’re dependent more on the Internet and all this stuff to kind of keep us connected, but at a certain point you also just have to just set it aside and get over it and just hang out with the family. You know? You can only look at Facebook so many times all day long when you don’t have anything else going on.

BISS List: We’re doing lots of puzzles and playing lots of games. That sort of thing.

Josh Clark: Yeah, doing lots of puzzle [Laughs]! Doing a lot of fishing with my boys, that’s been cool.

BISS List: Speaking of Facebook, I saw that nice trout your son caught the other day!

Josh Clark: I know! Those things were huge, right? That was just at a lake up above my house, about 20 minutes away. And right now they’re all waking up from their winter, so they’re going nuts.

BISS List: Well that is a nice thing to have right now. I am very jealous.

Josh Clark: Oh, man. It’s so fun. My boys are five, so…

BISS List: Oh wow! They’re twins??

Josh Clark: Yeah and I’ll have the fishing rods in a holder, and I’ll say, “Why don’t you go pick that up.” So they will and then they’ll fight them all the way in. And these things are big enough to take line out and everything.

BISS List: That’s so awesome. So, this latest album is definitely more stripped down compared to the band’s previous album, In the Wake, which had horns and string arrangements and all that. Was this album consciously meant as a counterpoint to that last effort, or is it just more of a reflection of the band’s current mood and makeup?

Josh Clark: I think current mood and makeup. We’re back down to a four-piece, you know. So it wasn’t like there was a hard-core dogma about it like, “We have to get this thing stripped down,” but we definitely wanted to make it just sound like the band is there in the room with you. I guess realism was more what we were going after. And also Trevor’s songs leant themselves to that approach. It was kind of closer to how Taught to be Proud (2005) was, in that we were just trying to capture like, this is how we sound, you know? Use the studio to make everything sound nice and crisp and clear. Maybe a little reverb and stuff. But other than that, it’s just guitar, bass, drums and pianos.

BISS List: So you were doing live takes, all together in the same room, for the most part?

Josh Clark: Well, the way we did this – since I’m up in southern Oregon – Scotty got the band back together pretty much, and he got Trevor and Eric and all of them in a room and they recorded the basics live together. And Trevor did some scratch vocals. Then he came up for a week to Ashland. We set up in my father in law’s garage – he has a little studio that he set up at his house – and we basically went to a job for like seven days. We got up early and went and sat down in there and Trevor put charts on my music stand and rolled tape [laughs]! So I did the bulk of the work on my parts there, then I came down to San Francisco and did some more stuff over the top of what I’d already laid down.

And then I kind of left it up to those guys to kind of hang out and Kevin Friedrichsen, who is our engineer, came in and engineered and mixed the whole thing and kind of guided it along. Then everybody got to have their say on it when the mixes came in. So it was partially remotely done, but the core band was in there. The rhythm section was altogether. Closer than we’d been in a long time to playing as a whole band on a record, actually, because In the Wake was made almost like the White Album.

BISS List: Oh, interesting.

Josh Clark: It goes back to how our last few records have been kind of experimental, at least for us. So this was kind of getting back to the basics. You know, I just wanted my guitar to sound like it does in real life. I didn’t want a ton of delay or to be mixing two different guitars together and all that kind of stuff. So I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out.

BISS List: Yeah, well I love that sound that you’ve got on the album. It’s got kind of a crunchy, raw tone… What are the effects you use to achieve that sound, for the most part?

Josh Clark: Well it’s just basically what I normally run. I usually only use a stomp box for some fuzz and that’s just about it. I used to have a few other things like a wah-wah pedal and things like that, but I got to the point where basically I can’t keep anything working for very long, so I just use like a Rat fuzz pedal. We did some stuff with just that, just plugged straight in. But then on some other songs I plugged the guitar directly in and then Kevin ran it through some different amp heads, just like going right into the mixing board. Then we’d run it through a couple different heads, maybe dial up a little distortion. But other than that I would kind of have an idea of how I wanted it to sound, like this Pete Townsend tone from a certain song or whatever. And we’d get kind of close to it. But mostly I just wanted it to be straight up. You know, just let the guitar tone sort of speak for itself.

BISS List: Yeah, I love it. And you play a Gibson almost exclusively, right? That signature red Gibson?

Josh Clark: Yeah. I got all three of them on this record actually. I have a ’68… Well, I think it’s a ’68, but the guy that works on it thinks it older, but… I have one ’68 [Gibson] 335 and a ’66 335. The red one my wife got me as a wedding gift. Like, the greatest wedding gift — greatest GIFT ever. A dream guitar.

BISS List: Seriously.

Josh Clark: And then I also put my ’66 Non-reverse Firebird on there too.

BISS List: Very cool.

Josh Clark: So I got ’em all out for this occasion.

BISS List: Nice. I have a ’73 SG myself.

Josh Clark: Oh beautiful.

BISS List: It’s been about seven years between albums for you guys. And in the interim I know you, and maybe some other members of the band had kids, or at least moved out of the city and settled down elsewhere.

Josh Clark: Yeah, I’m the only one with kids. But Trevor has a multi-generational set-up where his family has run a stable and winery for years, Garrod Farms. So he’s back on the farm and, you know, working the family business.

BISS List: So, was getting back in the studio something that you personally were itching to do, or did you have to be more convinced to do it?

Josh Clark: Oh, I definitely didn’t have to be convinced. We’d been talking about it forever. And if you want to start booking gigs, people start wondering like, you know, “Where’s the latest stuff?”

BISS List: Right.

Josh Clark: So more as a practical matter, just keeping the band going. We all just started to feel it was pretty necessary to do something new. And also with the addition of Eric [DiBerardino] – the newest member in the band – we figured it’d be nice to get him on a record and get the new formation documented and official.

BISS List: Yep. Cool. I was actually just about to mention the line-up change… You know, the Tea Leaf Green of today is not the same band that formed in San Francisco in the late 90s. For instance, you recently added Eric DiBerardino on bass, as you mentioned. You guys no longer live together in the same zip code. So how would you say the band’s sound has evolved or changed over the years? And in what ways has it stayed the same?

Josh Clark: Well, I think it’s kind of gone a little experimental at times, like we were doing two drums for a while. But the constant has always been Trevor obviously, and his unique singing voice. I mean nobody else sounds like that. And also his unique writing style. Otherwise, we put on different outfits here and there, but we always kind of come back to us. And this album is a great example of it, where we come back to putting the focus on the song and get to the meat and potatoes. And then the live setting is where you can start to experiment again and open it up and see what nooks and crannies you can find.

BISS List: Yeah, can’t wait to hear it live. One of these days!

Josh Clark: Yeah [laughs]. It’s too bad they don’t have these Zoom things with zero latency, you know? The technology is just not quite there to have live jams happen.

BISS List: Well this situation will definitely speed the roll out of that kind of technology, I’m sure.

Josh Clark: We actually tried a rehearsal a year or two ago with me up here and them down there for some gigs that we had coming up. We were trying to do it with FaceTime or something, and we were just like, “Nope, this ain’t gonna’ happen.”

BISS List: Switching gears a little, I know you are also an accomplished illustrator – you’ve done cover art for a bunch of the band’s albums, as well as for other bands, and I saw the video you did for “Shelter” [the opening track on Destination Bound]. I’m wondering how your creative process as an illustrator differs from your creative process as a musician? Obviously making music with a band is a more collaborative process, inherently. But do you think the visual arts and creating something like a poster or a video or an animation, does that scratch the same itch for you, or is it a totally different thing? Is it different halves of your brain that you’re activating? Or do you feel like you could be just as happy to do artwork, you know, work on your illustrations for the rest of your life, or do you need to have the outlet of guitar as well? Just trying to figure out where those seemingly different creative impulses come from and which, if either, holds more sway.

Josh Clark: Well, yes… I mean, they’re both extremely satisfying. But there’s nothing like… What you can’t ever get with painting and drawing and that creative process is the live performance rush. You know, having the audience reaction to a slamming show in front of a full house is like nothing, nothing on earth. But coming up with the ideas – writing songs – is really similar to coming up with compositions for illustrations or storyboards or whatever, and all those sorts of things I’m doing. And also being in the studio is pretty similar to working the gearboxes when you’re animating. It’s kind of the same. It’s meticulous and slow and you have to have that sort of over-arching vision of a thing. But then you also get into the weeds, you know? The satisfaction of the finished product of a record is also a very different satisfaction than a live show. But it’s also very satisfying when your characters come to life, or you’ve made a cool art piece that gets a great response from people and your client and whoever you’re working with. Like I work with lots of other artists with the animation and the videos, so I’m still able to be collaborative in that way. Sort of similar to like with the band. But it was really, really exciting that we were doing a record, because when we did our last record, I hadn’t even… I taught myself to animate since then. You know, I’ve always been an illustrator, but I hadn’t done this animation stuff. And I still haven’t done a full proper animated treatment for Tea Leaf yet, that “Shelter” piece was sort of like a motion graphics sort of thing. But it was really exciting to have the opportunity to finally have the two come together.

BISS List: Yeah, that’s the dream. That’s awesome.

Josh Clark: Yeah, you know, one informs the other. So when I’m starting to feel really confident with the guitar, I may start feeling not that confident as a painter, you know? And vice versa. And then you kind of learn the lessons from both of them about what works and what doesn’t. It kind of becomes sort of a similar approach.

BISS List: Interesting. And there must be something about art school or art college kids. Right? Seems like all the British bands all met at art college. So there’s obviously something there [laughs].

Josh Clark: Yeah, I think so. But, you’ve got to be a drop-out though. Yep, you’ve got be an art-school drop-out to be a successful musician [laughs].

BISS List: Totally. So, in some ways the Coronavirus, this whole thing has been crushing for the music business with tours getting canceled and venues shuttered. But in other ways, it’s been an unexpected boon, as we’ve talked about with people livestreaming and new platforms taking off to support the new virtual model. I’ve even seen you do a couple of shows from your living room. Do you have any idea, or a sense of how you think this is going to affect the music business going forward? Do you think this is just a blip that will all forget about it in a few years, or do you think this is going to have lasting ramifications?

Josh Clark: Well, I mean, I can’t imagine how it would be if we were the band that we were 10 or 15 years ago when we were trying to make this our total living, you know? So my heart goes out to a lot of the young bands that were just starting to hit their stride when this hit. And those that were trying to get started when this hit. And to those that have been going for a while and who are just going show to show. So, you know, hopefully they can survive it. That’s another skill you kind of learn, is just to survive. Especially for touring musicians and lifers like that. So hopefully everybody can crawl out from under this. But I hope, and it seems to be, that the positive could be fostering an appreciation for those livestreams, and for everything that artists are putting out. Where before, when you had so many choices, you might not tune into Johnny’s Living Room Show. And you might not notice or give the time to somebody who’s extraordinarily talented and trying to get that exposure. This is a good way, hopefully, for people to not take it all so much for granted, because there is an embarrassment of riches as far as talent out there. And these guys are all independent talents, for the most part now, and doing it on their own. And they need that support. So hopefully this will just help boost people’s level of appreciation for what’s out there.

BISS List: Yeah, for sure. And maybe help develop new revenue streams, or whatever, to supplement the GoFundMe’s and that sort of thing. You know, selling merch direct and stuff like that. Yeah, who know? It’s definitely going to be interesting.

Josh Clark: Yeah, I mean I’ve checked out all sorts of stuff that I probably would have skipped over before this. And now it’s become a fun thing, because you don’t know when’s the next actual live show you’re going to go see. You know? It also just goes to show how important music really is… To humans. To the human experience. How necessary musicians are to people’s quality of life.

BISS List: Yeah, well it’s very much a hole in my, and a lot of other people’s lives, these days… To not get to see friends at shows and see the bands we love and all that comes with that. Can’t wait ’til it all comes back.

Thinking back to those – like you just mentioned, bands just getting their start – thinking back to those early days in San Francisco, how much were you guys conscious of being part of a budding scene and playing a leading role in creating that scene? You know, here in the late 90s, early 2000s. And how much were you just sort of living in the moment and maybe not aware of what was happening with you and ALO and some others really being catalysts for the scene that was developing? Or were you conscious of that?

Josh Clark: Well, we were… hopeful for that. I think we got there. You know, we were young and wanted to make a splash. Wanted to create a scene. And there was stuff that was existing already here in SF. There was a big acid jazz sort of thing going on and a lot of like Latin jazz stuff happening at the Elbo Room and places like that.

BISS List: Right?! Like the Broun Fellinis?

Josh Clark: Yeah! We did a lot of shows with them. And also Alphabet Soup was big.

BISS List: Totally.

Josh Clark: Yeah, but you know, we got a break with this Monday night gig at the Elbo Room that we did every Monday night and then ALO had a Tuesday night gig at Mick’s Lounge. So we would go to their show and then they would come to our shows on Monday. It was never like a competition, but I feel like we were definitely pushing each other. We were on the ride together. And it also helped that Trevor went to high school with those guys.

BISS List: Ahhh, I didn’t know that.

Josh Clark: Yeah. I think he’s a year or two younger, but… He’s known them pretty much all his life. So we were hanging right away. And then you add all the New Monsoon guys. And there were these great singer songwriter guys, like this guy Obo Martin who was around. I don’t know where he is these days, but… He was like he was like a peer-slash-songwriting hero to us. He had a song called, “Be Good Tanya,” and I think that’s where the Be Good Tanya’s got their name.

BISS List: Interesting.

Josh Clark: And Sean Hayes was around then too. So there was a whole other thing, like a serious jazz thing where everybody was studying jazz and trying to get their jazz chops up. And then there was also a pretty big songwriter thing. So we kind of ended up somewhere in the middle there, of improv and songwriting, which were the two sort of focuses. At the same time, we didn’t have a lot of material when we were starting out, so the best thing to do when you’re playing in the clubs is to get people dancing. So we just wrote a bunch of, you know, long jams in the beginning, just to get everybody moving. So you’re not trying to fight the sound system or the loud bar to get your ideas across. But then we were slowly getting more and more into the songwriting, and realizing that we could actually be pretty good at it.

BISS List: Well it was definitely a fun time and place to be here in San Francisco. I moved out here in ’99, so right as you guys were kind of blowing up.

Josh Clark: Oh yeah, it was great. McFadden was playing a lot back then and I remember the first time seeing him thinking like, “OK, I’m going to go home and burn my guitar.” I think the first time I saw him live he was actually playing my guitar. I loaned it to him because his had busted or something and we had opened for them. It was the McFadden Experience or something.

BISS List: Right, the Trio! That’s awesome. He’s actually the last person I interviewed before you.
(Read the Eric McFadden BISS interview!)

Josh Clark: Oh nice.

BISS List: So any other fond memories from those days. You know, playing those big house parties, warehouse gigs?

Josh Clark: Oh yeah man. I mean we played in our living room. We all lived in the same house out in the Richmond, me and Trevor. And you know, Scotty was in the neighborhood and Ben C. [Ben Chambers, TLG’s original bass player]. So, you know, Trevor and I lived together for like 10 years. They finally kicked us out – right before In the Wake, really! But yeah, it really was a great local scene. It was the same music heads and parties, and then going from playing in living rooms and house parties. Playing over in the Turtle House basement in Davis, to those people coming to support us and helping us get up to the Great American and hitting the other venue milestones around town. I mean, the first time we ever played a big show at the Great American that was sold out, I remember trying to come up those stairs and when I’d get nervous before a show, I’d get really dry heave-y. So I’m sitting there, dry heaving, and everyone else is up on stage and I’m like, “I think I have to puke.” But then I dragged myself up there. I get up there and it’s all good once you’re up there. And then our first Fillmore shows and stuff like that. The first time we played the Fillmore, we opened for the David Lindley Project, and he was like pretty much who I’ve tried to model all my guitar parts after. But, you know, so many great friends and memories. But now it seems like everybody’s had families and sort of moved on, you know? I don’t know a lot of people left in the City.

BISS List: Yep, I know. We’re some of the last holdouts here! On that note, I will let you go. But it was great chatting with you and I hope we can get out on the river together one of these days.

Josh Clark: Yeah, I’d love to.

BISS List: And hopefully it won’t be too long before we get to see you guys up on stage again.

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Tea Leaf Green’s latest album, Destination Bound, can be found on all streaming platforms and the band looks forward to playing the songs in front of live audiences live as soon as they can.