by Bob Makin

The Toronto-based instrumental outfit The New Deal doesn't want to be a house band or a jam band. Keyboardist Jamie Shields, the trio's spontaneous melody maker, human drum machine Darren Shearer and the group's groovemeister,  bassist Dan Kurtz, just want to be The New Deal, an eclectic, danceable, improvisational, sample-sequencer-and-overdub-free sound onto itself that unites both the house and the jam scenes.

    I spoke with Shields right after the band and several similar-sounding outfits were featured in a Spin magazine article by Richard Gehr, author of "The Phish Book." In a Spin article about Phish a few years back, Gehr brought attention to some of the then new groups that the veteran jam band had spawned: moe., Ominous Seapods and Moon Boot Lover. The national followings of all three bands immediately mushroomed. The recent Gehr article, which also featured The Disco Biscuits, Fat Mama, Sound Tribe, Sector 9, Lake Trout and Medeski, Martin and Wood with DJ Logic, may have an even bigger impact.

    Shields feels that the techno jam scene may be the music industry's next big thing. But unlike most trends nailed with that catch-phrase, the keyboardist thinks the union of improvisational rock and electronic dance music will last because it can flourish as long as there's people who want to dance to it. Given that house music goes back to the late '70s and improvisational rock is even older, the techno-jam scene has some pretty strong roots. Compound that with the technological and financial ease of today and tomorrow's recording equipment, and you've not only got the next big thing, you've got a sure thing.

    For The New Deal and its fans, what's more fleeting is its CD releases. So far, the band has released a limited run of two sparsely packaged live discs on its own Sound and Light Records: "This Is Live," a document of the trio's first real gig in early 1999, and "Live: Portland, ME 12/17/99," a killer show in the midst of a New England blizzard. Once the 1,000 or so copies are of these discs are sold, the band plans to move onto another release, much like the feeling of a spontaneous New Deal performance: if you weren't there, you missed out.

    A third live disc will be released in the fall. The band's studio debut, based on the spontaneous music composed at live shows, will be readied once negotiations for distribution and representation are ironed out. In the meantime, enjoy this enlightening and uplifting chat with Shields. For more information about The New Deal, check out www.sound-and-light.com.

How do you feel about all the attention The New Deal and some of the other techno jam bands have gotten in Spin and Entertainment Weekly recently?

    Shields: The New Deal has worked hard in the past year or so to play a lot and turn people onto the band that way. One thing that the Spin article was able to do was to get people to check out the band on their own. Some people are trying to hunt down some shows. That helps us a lot, that recognition factor. It's been great.

Comment on how you've turned DJ-oriented house and breakbeat music into a live experience.

    Shields: It depends on who you ask in the band. If you ask our drummer, Darren, he's all about trying to sound like a drum machine with a human element. If you ask our bass player, he's all about getting the most out of the same four or five notes. He can play the same thing over and over and over, but he always plays it with different inflictions, and he plays it with a different feel all the time, where he may change one note up here and there. To him, the bass is his job in playing house music or progressive electronic music. And if you ask me, it's none of the above. I'm all about trying to create a song on the spot. We're improvising a lot on stage so it often falls to me to create that song right then and there. So I'm probably the guy with the least amount of electronic direction on stage when we play. I'm more a song-oriented kind of guy. But the other two guys feel their responsibility is to maintain that electronic groove.

But the house and breakbeat scene is mostly DJ-driven.

    Shields: It's all DJ-driven. People do all their creation in the studio and when they play live, there's no performance going on. It's all a replication of the work these guys did in the studio, which is the exact opposite for us.

The problem that the mainstream music industry has had with that kind of music is that you really can't put a face on it. It's not Britney Spears. It's not Bruce Springsteen. But you guys are a band and you play instruments. And the irony of this kind of music is that there's a portion of it that is called drum and bass, but you don't really go see somebody play the drum and bass unless they're going to see a band like The New Deal. So you're putting a face on this stuff.

    Shields: I agree with you 100 percent, but it goes even deeper than that. With regard to the live experience, people like to have an interaction with the performer one way or another.

At least American audiences do.

    Shields: Most audiences do at a very base level. If you walk into a venue and you spend your entire time staring at some guy who's spinning a record, there's no real interaction between the performer and the audience. But if you have guys playing, you are obviously vibing on what the audience is doing, then that creates some kind of nuclear reaction where it gets bigger and then bigger and bigger and bigger. People completely get off on that when they see The New Deal because they know that we're feeling what they're feeling and we're trying to throw it back at them yet again. A DJ can't change what he's playing on the spot, whereas a live band can.

Given that, do you think what you're doing and what The Disco Biscuits, Sector 9, Lake Trout, Fat Mama, Medeski, Martin and Wood with DJ Logic and the other bands featured in that Spin article are doing, could be, for lack of a better phrase, 'the next big thing.'

    Shields: I think so, yeah, in a couple of ways. It could be the next big thing because what else is there to be the next big thing? And you could look at it in a more positive way, which is that there's a lot of good qualities about these types of bands that could make them ... But the next big thing has a negative connotation to it. It implies that it doesn't last. This kind of music is going to last. This is not swing.    

There's a revolution that has been happening in music in the last five years based on the availability of recording equipment for anybody to make records, the availability of being able to produce those in somewhat of a mass capacity. I mean 500 copies. These DJs can get a computer system set up to cut albums for under three grand.

Then they just have to pay for supplies.

    Shields: Right. Because it's so simple now, there's a huge rise in that now everybody's a DJ. But that's a good thing because with more people that do it comes more people that will last. That's a long-lasting thing. There's kids out there who've never seen a live band, yet they go to see music all the time.

At a rave.

    Shields: Exactly. So to me, these bands have a long-lasting appeal because they're taking what I think is going to be around for a very long time, and that is dance music. It may not be as trendy as it is becoming right now, but it's going to be around forever. The bottom line is that people like to dance. If there's going to be a lot of people making dance music, then there's going to be bands out there. If there's people out there to dance, there's going bands out there making dance music.

My theory is two-fold. One, the music industry already has hooked the youngest radio listeners through these teen-pop acts which are very hip-hop-oriented. When they outgrow that, they'll want something meatier to bite into. Then add in the fact that it is what they grew up with, a live act rather than a DJ, and you've got the Britney Spears fans of today becoming The New Deal fans of tomorrow.

    Shields: Absolutely. It's not a new thing anymore. They listen to that music and there's a dance element for sure. Sadly, that's the only dance element that gets on the radio nowadays. But I'm sure The New Deal and The Disco Biscuits and those other bands aren't fresh off the boat. They know what side their bread is buttered on in regards to radio play. They know who's going to play them and who's not. So anybody who harbors any surprise that KROQ in L.A. is not playing The New Deal has got a little learning to do. Those guys play the kind of dance music that is three minutes long, has a verse and a chorus and a solo. This is the kind of dance music that these kids grow up on, and, hopefully, they grow out of it, but they stick with dance music.

This recording equipment that you mentioned. It's not just for DJs. The bands are tapping into it too. But does the band have to have a technology base or could a conventional Rolling Stones-type band tap into it?

    Shields: Well that question can be applied to writing music. Do you have to have the technical understanding of music to write a good song? The answer is no you don't. In regards to recording, it's about being creative. For a lot of DJ stuff and people that are more sample-oriented -- The New Deal doesn't use any samples -- but for people who are more sample-oriented, you don't need to know how to use the sampler. It's really easy to use. Anybody can use them.

    Take a guy like Danny Elfman, who wrote the Batman series, all the music to The Simpsons, all the Tim Burton movies. That guy doesn't know how to write a note of music. He can't tell you the difference between a C and a G, but he's written some of the most innovative and compelling movie soundtracks in the last 10 years. So who's to say? You've got people like DJ Shadow, who's never used a computer in his life. He uses standard recording equipment and again, he creates compelling and very innovative music. Knowing the technological stuff I'm sure helps, but at the same time, it could be hindrance. If you know already what you can't do, then your limitations are in front of you.

You have two live CDs out already. They're both live. They have very sparse packaging. They're sold via the Internet and shows on a limited basis. Comment on that unusual approach to releasing records.   

  Shields: That's the ethic of The New Deal's performance: once it's been performed, it's never going to be performed that way again because a lot of the show that we do is improvised. We like to feel that each show is special. Our first album was our first show ever. We happened to tape it by chance. We were like, 'Oh, there's a tape machine.' We recorded it to cassette. And we taped it just so we could listen back to it. And we listened back to it and I was blown away. I was just floored. As a result, we felt the need to put this out. We didn't think, we're going to release this 75-minute CD with a bunch of improvised instrumental pieces and become stars. It was all about getting this music that we were very proud of out to our friends and to people who might enjoy it. That worked far better than we ever imagined. We touched a nerve with a lot of people who were into this kind of music.    

With our second one, the ethic still applied. We wanted to start releasing shows that were special to us. You make them limited editions so it's much like show itself. It will soon be gone forever and you were either at the show or you weren't. So you either bought the CD or you didn't. You don't have a chance later on. You have to partake in that experience as it comes to you or it's gone forever. Our second CD is an EP. We're releasing another one soon. We run a record company called Sound and Light Records. What this is something called The Sound and Light Live Series of shows that we're particularly proud of or maybe had some sort of turning point in the band's musical direction.    

With the first one, it was a complete surprise. The soundman brought us tapes and said, 'Here, I taped your show.' We were like, 'Cool, thanks.' And he taped it on other people's demo tapes. It was pretty funny. Then we left the tapes in Portland, Maine, at a Holiday Inn there. We didn't realize it for two weeks. We were like, 'I thought you had the tapes. No, I thought you had the tapes. No, nobody had the tapes.'

How'd you get them back?

    Shields: The hotel was like, 'Yeah, we've got them right here.' We were like, 'Wow, cool.' It's one of those many situations were the stars were in alignment. There's been a number of them and that was yet another one.    

The second CD was in Portland, Maine, in a snowstorm in December '99. There were about four people there. The third one is from April from a place called Guelph, Ontario. And again, that was just a show that we were like, 'Wow, good show.' That'll be out in about a month.

Will you ever release a studio album?

    Shields: There's a lot of action going on with The New Deal right now. We're going to be able to do things on a larger scale. One thing we're going to do is record our shows on 24-track so that it sounds really good. We'll be able to take it into the studio. The performance is live because that's where we play our best, but the sounds themselves will be studio. They'll be really clean and precise and won't sound like a live show. It will be a live performance, but it won't sound like one.

When do you think that will happen?

    Shields: That'll probably start happening in a month or so, when we start doing some longer tours.

When do you think it will come out?

    Shields: It's tough to say. The process of recording it will be simple. We'll just step out and play a show, but the process of mixing it, sifting through all the shows and finding the best bits, that's going to take a while. I wouldn't see that coming out for a while.

Will that come out on Sound and Light?

    Shields: Both the band and the label are in negotiations, the likes of which I really can't get into. But we're taking this to the next level with regards to both the band and the record label. We'll have to move on that in order to get this studio record ready to go. The kind of stuff that we need to do to tour at the level that we want to requires a certain level of cash. W e have that money, but at the same time, we need a steady degree of money coming in. You have to partner up with someone who's got the dough. That will enable us to do it. That's what we're dealing with right now.

Is that negotiation with a label or management?

    Shields: It's both. There's a lot of label talk going and there's a lot of manager type stuff going on. We control our entire world. We direct everything that goes on in The New Deal, but the only way that we can work with other people is if there contributors as opposed to overseers. We've been dealing with finding people that are more in a contribution mode than a supervisor mode.

You've got a show coming up opening for Electron, the techno side project of Disco Biscuits bassist Marc Brownstein that also features Biscuits keyboardist Aron Magner.

    Shields: That'll be great. A lot of what we do is based on personal relationships. There's a pretty close relationship between me and Marc. I played with him in The Maui Project. Marc is a great guy. He was kind enough to get us in on the show. He totally didn't need to have us, but he wanted us to be on the show so we're completely looking forward to doing it. It's going to be a great time.

Now while Disco Biscuits started out as a jam band that got into techno, you've really marketed yourself as a "live progressive breakbeat house" band and not a jam band. But since playing Berkfest last year, the jam band scene has latched onto you like a bear to honey. Comment on how you feel about this and why you decided to play Berkfest again this year.

    Shields: We decided to play Berkfest at that time because it was a show. It was our first U.S. show ever. I knew from being familiar with the jam band scene, having played in other bands in the past, I knew in my heart ... I hadn't even heard of The Disco Biscuits. I didn't know what they were or what they did and didn't care. I didn't know. I just knew because we were playing almost completely improvised music that the crowd would be into it. And they were completely into it. They were blown away in fact.

So you'll approach both markets, the house market and the jam band market.

    Shields: Right. We play raves with purely dance kids who get blown way too, who, had you told them that they were going to see a live band, probably wouldn't have shown up. That's what we're trying to change.

That's fascinating. Comment on that further, how you weave in and out of the jam band and house/breakbeat scenes, drawing and uniting fans from both.

    Shields: The New Deal just plays The New Deal. We don't try to play more house-oriented music or more jam band-oriented music. We go and play the music that we've been playing since the beginning. We've been improving upon it, of course, and changing things around, but we've never stepped onstage and said, 'You know what? Let's go for more a dance music set tonight' because we know if we start second guessing the crowd, we're just going to end up wrong. So we're like, 'Let's just go out and do what we do. Let's have the confidence in the kind of music that we play to enable us to just play that style wherever we go.' We're trying to create a New Deal personality.

You're trying to create a new deal.

    Shields: Yeah. We're trying to create a new deal. Exactly. When people think of The New Deal, we don't want them to think, 'Oh yeah, The New Deal. That's a house band' or 'that's a jam band' or 'they're a mix of house and jam.' We want them to think, 'Oh yeah, The New Deal. Like 'They're the new deal.' When you think of The Allman Brothers, you don't have to say they're a mix of boogie and rock. You know it's The Allman Brothers' sound.

The trick would be to get it that well known.

    Shields: Exactly and to stick to your guns and play the kind of music that you feel is the way.

What was the jam band you were in?

    Shields: I was in a band called One Step Beyond and did a lot of touring with Merl (Saunders). Then a bunch of the guys in the band went on to become Merl's backing band for, like, three years. I did Phish tours in '91, '92 and '93.

As a fan.

    Shields: Yeah. I'm pretty well-versed in Phish. I didn't stop liking Phish. I just stopped going to see Phish, but I'm fairly well-versed in the intricacies of the jam band world.

At that point, were you into techno music?

    Shields: No.

What got you into techno music?

Shields: You know what? I'm not even that into techno. Darren and Dan, they're pretty into electronic music, but as far as like that style goes, I'm the least educated guy in the band about that. I'm more into pop music and stuff. I'm into techno as well. I own my share of albums and stuff, but I'm definitely not the (techno) guy. To me, it's about the creation of a song. That's why the chemistry of the band is so unique because we're not up there playing strictly dance music. We trying to create songs while we're on stage. That's where my strength comes in. I play the riffs and the chords and the harmony and the melody because that's what I like.

And they're the machine.

Shields: Exactly. They're like the groovemeisters.

Bob Makin is an entertainment writer for Gannett NJ. Jam bands are welcome to send him material at Courier News, P.O. Box 6600, Bridgewater, NJ 08807 and email information to makinclan@aol.com