KTVU.com talks to Bay Area rock icon Mickey Hart

As one of the drummers for iconic Bay Area rock band The Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart is no stranger to heading into deep space musically. During its epic existence as the psychedelic era's most durable act, the Dead blazed a singularly unique trail that stretched from the '60s well into the 1990s. The band's unique improvisational chemistry earned it a loyal rag-tag caravan of gypsy followers that made the Dead a small cottage industry unto itself and nearly a religion for its most dedicated fans.

In addition to his decades as a member of the Dead and Dead-affiliated bands, Hart has explored a myriad of other projects as a noted musicologist, band leader (recording landmark albums with his global percussion ensembles Planet Drum and the Global Drum Project) and author. He spoke with KTVU.com in August about his latest group -- the Mickey Hart Band -- and the unusual sound sources he is using to build the foundation of his new music.

KTVU.com: It seems that -- with the exception of live work with Rhythm Devils and possibly going back to the Music Box project -- a majority of what you’ve done outside of the Dead seem to have focused primarily on percussion and global rhythms rather than traditional rock songwriting. I was wondering is the new Mickey Hart Band a return to a rock setting for you?

Mickey Hart: Yes, but it’s also about global rhythms. But this is now more cosmic and universal rhythms as opposed to global rhythms. Because what I’m involved in doing now is a personal investigation into the sounds of the universe starting with the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. That’s the start of our story, as humans and as the universe. All my books are about that.

Until recently we weren’t able to really detect the echo of the Big Bang, and now we are. Reading the radio telescopes from around the world, we actually have light waves that we change into sound waves and bring into our auditory spectrum and play with them and make music with them. As opposed to just random space sounds; its not science fiction. These are sounds that actually come from these epic events in the cosmos. It's beyond global now. Now its galactic. Universal more appropriately.

KTVU.com: I'm trying to imagine what light waves from the Big Bang sound might like when converted into sound waves...

Mickey Hart: Actually, in a way, it sounds like a low-flying plane. It's not like a bang. It's actually 52 octaves below middle C. So brought up into our hearing range it's a B flat. The cosmic low end of the universe really resonates at B flat. So some of these waves are so large you have to bring them up into our hearing. Most of them are way higher; the light waves are very fast, so you have to slow them down using a sophisticated algorithm on the computer and change their form into sound. This is done by scientists at Lawrence Livermore and at Meyer Sound in Berkeley. And then I get it and I sound design it and compose with it and make it part of the music. And Robert Hunter wrote the words to it. So, yes it is popular music. It has guitars and singers, but it also has these cosmic events, these epic events in it as well. It's like dancing with the infinite universe. It's very exciting. It's called sonification. That's what the science is called. When you sonify something, you turn it into sound.

KTVU.com: It sounds like the foundation of using those sounds would be almost more ambient...

Mickey Hart: Some of them are ambient, but a lot of them are very melodic and very lyrical. Some of them are rhythmic. So it runs the gamut. It's not like science fiction music, when you listen to tv or the movies 'whooowhooowhooo' [imitating sci fi sounds]. That's not what space really sounds like.

KTVU.com: Right. It's not the classic Forbidden Planet soundtrack...

Mickey Hart: There's a lot of collisions up there for sure. There's a lot of chirping and whirling and pulsing and so forth. So I take that information and transform its form into something that we can call music. I sound design it basically. I interpret the sound from whatever part of the universe I'm focusing on.

KTVU.com: Who is involved in the new band besides vocalists Tim Hockenberry and Crystal Monee Hall?

Mickey Hart: Well, you'll have to come and see who they are [laughs]. I'm going to keep them under wraps. But you wouldn't believe this band. This band is really hot. But yes, they are the vocalists. These are new folks. Young folks. The band is perhaps the best band I've put together outside of Global Drum and Planet Drum. This is a love for me. It's very smooth and very powerful.

KTVU.com: How did you connect with the two vocalists? Did you see them perform and decide you wanted to work with them?

Mickey Hart: I was looking for like-minded people that would be easily corrupted [laughs] if you will, and who wanted to be part of something experimental and that was this joyful. So I kind of waited for a long time. I've been working on this for over two and a half years, crunching these sounds in order to be able to play them. So I picked this band very carefully. It took a long time to find like-minded folks who wanted to go out a little bit beyond -- and sometimes way beyond -- the normal rock and roll setting. But it rocks. It's got a back beat. You can't lose it.

KTVU.com: Did they collaborate in the writing or was this principally you working with Robert Hunter's lyrics as far as the music?

Mickey Hart: They absolutely collaborated. Absolutely. It was mostly me and Hunter writing the songs, but there was collaboration and personal expression. Because that's what I wanted. I wanted a band concept as opposed to just Hunter and I sitting together and writing the tunes. There was a lot of contribution by both Crystal and Tim on the vocals.

KTVU.com: One other thing that I have to ask as I'm still trying to wrap my head around the cosmic aspect of the music; how will you introduce those sound designs you created with the sampling of the universe? Will that be something that would be triggered as part of your drum kit?

Mickey Hart: I trigger them all from pressure-sensitive pads and my computer, which is called RAMU. RAMU stands for Random Access Musical Universe. Its my database, my sound droid. I take that wherever I go now. I never leave home without it. Because it allows me to play all these different colors and go to these incredible galaxies and make sounds that were unborn until now. So it's so interesting for me as an artist. I'm sure other people will get into this later. It's just waiting there. The infinite universe is just speaking to me.

KTVU.com: I understand a lot of the last couple of weeks has been focused on rehearsal, putting in full days...

Mickey Hart: It's been a very intensive rehearsal period, gathering all these people together and being able to learn all this new material and being able to play it will a little grace and power without repeating. There's a lot of improvisation in it, which I dearly love. So it's working, it's growing. It's living. It's on fire and I'm just overjoyed to be part of it.

KTVU.com: Are these shows coming up this weekend the global debut of this band? It hasn't played out live in public before?

Mickey Hart: That's correct. The band played two tunes at Wavy Gravy's birthday party -- his 75th I think it was -- a few months ago. But it wasn't the whole band and the tunes were not rehearsed or anything. We only played a couple of songs. I would say this will be the world premiere. And I might add I'm also working with George Smoot, the Nobel laureate from Berkeley who was the gentleman who discovered the Big Bang in 2006. That was also a great meeting when George and I locked up, because he's the preeminent astrophysicist in the world.

KTVU.com: As far as collaborating with someone like George Smoot, is it a discussion of concepts? It sounds like it is a musical collaboration in the end, but I'm wondering how do you draw what you learn from him into the music?

Mickey Hart: Well, George sees it as just wave form and not really sonics. They don't see it as sound. Astrophysicists see it more as radio waves or light waves. But George keeps me on the straight and narrow and explains a lot of what's going on up there in terms that I can understand. We're preparing a DVD that will be presented to the President and congress in about four months at the Smithsonian IMAX theater in D.C. We're collaborating specifically on that project. We're trying to create a new curriculum for the next decade for astrophysicists, scientists, mathematicians, technician and all of that. The President is very interested in this.

KTVU.com: Is that more along the lines of some of the YouTube clips I've seen from the last Jamcruise? It seemed almost like a lecture with visual imagery and music...

Mickey Hart: Right, it has narration on the top of it with the events and the sounds of the events. George and I kind of take people through the storyline. George of course gives the scientific take, because I'm not a scientist, and mine is the spiritual take on it. All my books go back to the beginning of percussion and that's the Big Bang. That's where the first rhythms came from. That's the start. The blank page of the universe exploded and created the stars, planets, galaxies, us. So, my books talk of it, but when I wrote the books back in the '90s, there were no instruments to measure [the Big Bang]. But it was a no brainer, once you start thinking about it, where the rhythm really came from. It had to start somewhere and of course it started at the moment of creation of the universe. So this is actually a sonic replica of all that. When you look at a star, now you can hear that star.

KTVU.com: You are definitely going outside of the box, and not just from what you've done in the past. It sounds pretty pioneering...

Mickey Hart: The past just took me here. This is just the culmination. Everything leads up to this. It wasn't a giant leap. I've been investigating this in words and in thought and sound since my beginning fascination with the world's rhythms. And if you follow that timeline, eventually it will lead you back to the moment where space and time were created. If you wanted to find the lineage of where it all came from. That's what my books Planet Drum and Drumming at the Edge of Magic were all about: where did it come from and why are we here? What is our place in the universe? And that's what this is all about. The DVD tries to explain that timeline.

KTVU.com: I know there will probably be some Grateful Dead material played at these upcoming shows. Are you rehearsing a wide range of older material just to have it to draw on or are there certain songs that you definitely know you want to play that will fit with this new material?

Mickey Hart: Yeah, we have some Grateful Dead material sprinkled in amongst all of this, because I know the fans want to hear that, and Crystal and Tim are rendering it as best as it possibly could be rendered. So yeah, there gonna be some Grateful Dead music played, but it's not all Grateful Dead music needless to stay.

KTVU.com: I saw the latest line-up of the Rhythm Devils [with fellow Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann] just played some festival dates in the past couple of weeks. I was wondering if you have more plans to work with that band besides those live shows?

Mickey Hart: Any day playing with Bill's a good day. That's the first thing. Bill is building his house now. He lives in Hawaii and is taking some time now to build a new home and chill a bit. So we've just put that to sleep for a while until it rises up again. Just like the Dead. Someday maybe it'll happen again. But in the meantime, this is just riveting my imagination and attention. This is what I'm doing now. Everybody is friends. We're just putting it to sleep for a while. Letting it rest.

KTVU.com: I had one other question relating to the Rhythm Devils. The soundtrack to Apocalypse Now is one of my favorite soundtracks ever. A lot of the music you've done in the past, especially with the Rhythm Devils and your more percussive music, seems natural for cinematic use. In my research I didn't find any other movies you'd been involved in. Was it just a matter of the right project not coming along?

Mickey Hart: That's pretty much it. The last one I did was the Gang Related Tupac Shakur movie with Jim Belushi. But a lot of the music has been licensed for dance. So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing With the Stars and all that. They use a lot of the music, a lot of my rhythm pieces. So it's being used for that. I'm just waiting for the right thing to come along, but I'm pretty busy with what I'm doing right now.

KTVU.com: Another recent project you had was the music you did for your collaboration with Alonzo King and his Lines Ballet Company...

Mickey Hart: That's right. I forgot about that. That's true. I did that a few months ago and that was a smashing success. I had a blast and learned about ballet. Alonzo and I worked together so well. And now they're filming it for a DVD. That was a wonderful project.

KTVU.com: Was that your first collaboration with a choreographer or a ballet company?

Mickey Hart: Yeah, that was the first. But it won't be the last. I have an amazing respect for ballet now. It's modern ballet, not the classic form. What they're doing...they're like triathletes These guys and these gals are just in the top shape physically and spiritually. They're right on the edge. I was thrilled to see my music being turned to dance. Alonzo King is a genius.

KTVU.com: You are the latest in a long line of impressive collaborators King has used. I've seen the company perform with Pharaoh Sanders and Zakir Hussain in the past. Once I saw that you were doing music for Lines, I thought 'Well, that makes sense.' They'd already worked with some of your collaborators really...

Mickey Hart: I think that's how I was introduced to Alonzo. Zakir had said 'You gotta meet Mickey! You gotta meet Mickey!' So he called me up and he said 'Zakir keeps saying I've got to meet you. I want to meet you!' And so I came down and we talked and that was that. We just locked up and the next thing I know, my music was composed and they were dancing to it. And it was just a wonderful experience. I'll do that any time again. I'd love to do something like that.

KTVU.com: Something else I caught on your website was that a lot of recording you've done of world music artists were going to be part of the Smithsonian collection. I was curious is it mostly going to be studio recordings that you've done? I imagine someone with your range of interests in recorded sound must have a ton of field recordings that could be part of it too...

Mickey Hart: I've got a lot of field recordings, but I gave them 25 recordings at first. I'm starting to give them my collection of recordings from around the world. Some of them are studio recordings. A lot of them were remote recordings from around the world: from Bali, from the Philippines and from Egypt. Those kinds of things. The Mickey Hart Collection in two or three months will appear on Smithsonian Folkways. I'm very proud of that; being there with the greatest song catchers. That's another thing that's happening. So I've been very busy preparing for the release of the collection. And, of course, yes there are hundreds of recordings, but the first 25 ... I think that's enough for the first load.

I really was interested in song catching. I wrote a book for National Geographic on song catchers and the history of field recordings since 1890. The men and women who went out in the field were very heroic, as a matter of fact. They were on the edge, to capture this music and bring it back. And some of these sounds are the sounds that I brought back when I was a song catcher.

KTVU.com: You mentioned earlier that the Dead was, as you put it, "asleep" for now. I know the surviving members still get together to address business affairs like the many archival releases of earlier Dead recordings and other things. It seems of all the various projects members of the Dead are involved in, Furthur [the band led by Bob Weir and Phil Lesh] is probably the closest related to the original Dead concept. Your band and Bill's band 7 Walkers both play Grateful Dead songs, but Further seem stick strictly to presenting the Dead's music in a new way. I was wondering, when the idea of Furthur came up, did you all have to agree to give it your blessing?

Mickey Hart: Look, we burnt the music together and anybody can play that music. I am not really interested right now in doing that. So I'm doing what I'm doing because I'm interested in doing that and Bill is doing what he's doing because he's interested in doing that. So when we get together and decide business decisions, we have a person who monitors all of the releases; someone who we trust. Our archivist. And then he brings to our attention what he thinks would be a good release and this and that and so forth. And then we all sign off on it.

So there's a mechanism that allows us to do good business even though we're not playing together. So there's no kind of friction between anybody or anything like that. It's just good business and we try to keep the Grateful Dead tension free in that way, so people can enjoy the music, because that's what it's really all about. It's not so much about how our feelings towards each other are, even though I have good feelings towards everybody in the band. I'm doing exactly what I want to do and I'm really happy to be doing it and I assume Bob and Phil are too. And so is Bill. They're doing exactly what they want to do.

KTVU.com: The Dead has always existed well outside of how the music industry worked and it seems like you continue to do so...

Mickey Hart: Well, what they're doing is not the Dead. That they can't do without me and Bill. If we wanted to do that again -- and perhaps we will someday -- we'll do it.

KTVU.com: What I was getting at was not so much about Furthur, but how you as a group were outside the music industry since you started. And now as the music industry tries to figure out ways to remain viable, you guys are nine steps ahead of the curve as far as your archival recordings and all the things you're doing with your history and the music you have. It's commendable. You certainly figured out your own science of how to do things...

Mickey Hart: You have to follow your own destiny, you know? And it works fine if you do that and you're not driven by any crazy managers telling you what to do. You find your own level and where you want to be and no one forces anybody to do anything. If you want to do it, you do it. We get together and we do. If not, we don't. It's very simple. We keep it on those terms. We did the Dead as hard as we could do it as best as we could. But now, like I said, I've got a universe out there waiting. And I'm allowed to do all these other things because I'm not out on the road constantly with Bob and Phil. This is much more interesting to me, actually.

The Mickey Hart Band plays Monday, Nov. 28, at Yoshi's in Oakland