Tea Leaf Green takes their music seriously, and it shows. Their songs are tight, their lyrics are poignant, and after more than a decade on the road, their music has come to reflect the modern Americana experience.

Chatting before the show at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn last week, Josh Clark, Scott Rager and Reed Mathis took me through their world for a bit, leaving me confident there’s still many exciting things to come from this band. (Trevor Garrod, meanwhile, was sleeping one off from the night before. So rock star! I dared not wake him up, for the sake of the show to come!)

While TLG has become one of the darlings of the “jam band” scene these days, the guys aren’t at all out to wow their crowds with virtuosic heroics. Instead of experimental tangents, they prefer to play as a more cohesive unit.  Sure they craft songs with plenty of room for fresh licks and clever lines, of which each band member takes full advantage of. But, they say, they always know where they want to end up.

 (Photography courtesy of John Ewing for The Listening Room Blog.)

And knowing where you want to end up has a lot to do with knowing where you want to start, which comes down to the set lists. Sometimes the guys just toss out songs in the van, one by one, building up the night’s repertoire. Other times they take turns writing the set for the night’s show, thinking of interesting transitions or unexpected turns. Either way, they say, it helps to all be on the same page. 

Mathis can especially attest to this. As a former member of the Jacob Fred Jazz Oddessy, he was used to playing night after night with no set list at all—which he said became a nightmare.

“Some people think a set list is ‘The Man’ trying to keep them down,” Mathis set. “When really, it’s a nice pair of shoes on a gravel road.”

That’s gotta be one of my favorite quotes of all time, without a doubt! 

I asked whether playing a tighter show has helped to propel the band to the level of success it is currently enjoying, and they said probably not. What has helped the band get to where they are is flat out hard work. 

“You gotta get off your ass and work,” Clark put it bluntly. Amen to that!

And work they do, playing shows across the country throughout the year, including the summer festival circuit. Lucky for all you Midwesterners, the band recently announced a string of March dates. Be sure to hit them up!

Setlist 1.23.09 

Set 1: Make A Connection > Devils Pay > Hot Dog > Kali-Yuga > Stormcloud, Let Us Go > Stick to the Shallows, Jezebel, Red Ribbons, Arise

Set 2: I’ve Been Seeking, California > Dragonfly, 7th story > Franz Hanzerbeak, Hangin From a Tree, Morning Sun, Innocent, Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey > Sex In The ’70s

Encore: Pretty Jane, Garden (Part III)

Many thanks to the band, the management and the venue for helping to coordinate the video coverage.

P.S. I have a bunch of extra video footage from both the concert and the interview, and I’d be happy to post it if the demand is there.