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Music Is Nothing that Everything Else Isn't
An Interview with Max Creek's Scott Murawski

by Dean Budnick

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On the weekend of July 30th Max Creek will be hosting yet another installment of its annual summer ritual, Camp Creek (for more information visit www.maxcreek.com). The band has plenty to celebrate nowadays, aside from its longevity (the group has remained together for nearly thirty years). This past spring the quintet released a new album, Spring Water. Meanwhile, the band is stepping up its touring efforts, plunging into markets it hasn't visited in a while (New York City, for instance). Guitarist Scott Murawski took a few moment to reflect on the band's storied history as well as his own performance style.

DB: I know you were rather young when you joined Max Creek, so why don't we go back to the start. How did you come to play the guitar and who were your early influences?

SM: I started on the piano when was eight, then I moved to the trumpet when I was ten. A year later I went over this kid's house after school, we went into his room, he said "check this out" and he pulled out an electric guitar. I had never been that close to one before. He had this monster amp in his room and he plugged in the guitar. He couldn't play, he basically poked at it with his thumb but I was just spellbound. So I went home and said "Mom, I need an electric guitar for my twelfth birthday," and my mom said, "No way," but she ended up getting me one anyway. When I first got it I played it for three weeks, and drove my parents insane. Probably a year later I hooked up with this other kid who was a good player and he showed me around, the basics of chords and leads. I was playing a lot of blues stuff.

DB: And then you started playing with Max Creek a few years after this, right? How old were you when you joined the band?

SM: I was fifteen.

DB: So in those three years you became pretty proficient I would imagine. How did you hook up with the group?

SM: I was still playing trumpet in school, and my trumpet teacher came over to give me a lesson. I was down in the basement cranking the blues on the guitar and he told me I should come over to a rehearsal and sit in with this band he was playing in, which was Max Creek. They were strictly country rock. He {Dave Reed} played acoustic guitar, and there was an electric bass [John Rider], and drums [Bob Gosselin]. That first night I went over they played some stuff and I just started playing blues over it, and they told me, "No, no. This is country, you have to play it in a major key, you can’t do that bluesy stuff." That was pretty much my initiation into bluegrass-type picking. When I first joined I only played on about ten songs.

DB: Since you were so young did you have any trouble getting into the bars to play?

SM: No, because at the time the drinking age was eighteen, and I was an older-looking fifteen. Actually there was one problem that occurred. Usually the band never mentioned my age but they used to play this one bar on Saturday nights, and the owner of this bar was a friend of theirs so they told him I was only fifteen and he said it was cool. The first night I was there I was sucking down beers, the owner found out about it and I was banned from the bar. Then because that was their regular gig they stopped calling me and I was out of the band for a while.

DB: When did they invite you back?

SM: What happened was that a few months later Dave came down with appendicitis, so they brought in Mark Mercier [still the group's keyboard player] as a replacement and he just stayed. Then they felt as though they still needed a guitar player so they had me come back to play some leads because Mark was a monster but they realized that still wanted some guitar in the mix. When I came back that's when everyone in the band but me had gone to see the Grateful Dead at Watkins Glen (editors note- two legendary show with the Allman Brothers Band and The Band on July 27th and 28th 1973 but you knew that already). They wanted to jam a bit more, incorporate more improvisation and get a bit more electrified. Eventually Dave went his separate way because he wanted to stick with the country rock, and acoustic ragtime music, so then I took over as the lone guitar player. I had to learn quite a bit and it became serious at that point.

DB: And you've been doing it for a while now. I'm curious, from your perspective, how have the audiences changed?

SM: They haven't (laughs) . The audiences have been basically eighteen to twenty-five year olds ever since I was fifteen. When I first started doing it, I was looking up at these older hippies saying "I'm out of my league." Then I was the same age as everyone at the bars and it just kind of stayed there for a while. Then slowly but surely I started noticing that these kids were getting younger and younger. Now I'm playing to kids who could be my kids, it's kind of weird (laughs).

When we started out with the country-rock a lot of college kids came out. Then when we started going more electric, and we started doing more Grateful Dead stuff we developed our own cult audience. I mean we would always have original material in our set, we would never a play set of Grateful Dead but we did quite a few Grateful Dead tunes and that helped to create a tight-knit group of listeners. At that time we were really doing something that no one else was doing because there were some rhythm- and blues based bands, and there were a number of clone bands, strict cover bands- I can think of three Rolling Stones bands and four Springsteen bands, and it was tough for us. We weren’t really a cover band but that's what the bars were selling. So they’d bill us as "Tribute to the Grateful Dead." We were like "Stop, please." but at least it was bringing the right clientele, in, people who could appreciate what we were doing.

DB: Do you think that association with the Grateful Dead carried a stigma?

SM: In some ways I think it still does. I meet people who are closer to my age, who were around at that time who have never seen us and they ask me "What is the name of your band?" I tell them Max Creek and then say, "Oh, it's a Grateful Dead cover band." And I'll say "Well, it probably hasn’t been for at least fifteen years but if you want to think of it like that..." But in part that came about because back then "Grateful Dead Music" was the only title for it. Now you have the whole jam bands thing because there are so many people who are doing it.

DB: How has your own performance style evolved over the years?

SM: When I started it was often a race to see how fast I could play, how many notes I could fit in. Then I started listening to more jazz people. I had a Pat Martino tape. I can still put that on and be mystified by what he's doing. It's mind-blowing. You listen to some guitar players and they're fast because they're playing some easy shit. Then you listen to Pat Martino and he's not playing anything easy, he's all over the fretboard and he's still fast. This isn't easy stuff to play slow and he’s burning it up. Then it got to the point where I just wanted to be able to play anything that I heard in my head, so that anything I heard, no matter where I was on the fretboard I could get it out. I did that for a while. I am not one of these people who's just a guitar-hound, who eats, drinks and sleeps guitar. I see myself as more of a writer than a guitar player. I have a roomful of instruments and I will play all of them. Rarely will I pick up the electric guitar first. Usually I'll pick up the acoustic. I have a banjo in there I've been playing quite a bit, I have a pedal steel and a bass, a couple of keyboards. The thing about it is, by developing your skills on any of these instruments, when you come back to the guitar, you've improved, you've learned something that can be translated to the guitar.

DB: You mentioned that you think of yourself as a writer. How has your writing changed over the years?

SM: I think I could do better (laughs). I am never satisfied. I will write a tune and be satisfied for a day. I write with a tape deck because I can't stand waiting, I'm instant gratification boy. I have to play all the parts, put all the drums down, do all the harmonies. So when I hear something in my head, a couple of hours later I want to hear the whole thing.

This goes back to my guitar playing too but I think that music is nothing that everything else isn't. What I mean by that is the whole universe is a vibration, the planets go around, and that's a very slow vibration. The tides are a little faster vibration. Then you get down to the human heartbeat which is faster and then a vibrating string which is faster yet. I think that it’s all harmonics. So one of the improvements in my playing is lalalam not driving the music, I'm trying to forget about what I'm doing and whatever that moment is just let it express itself through me. Rather than thinking about what I'm playing, I'm thinking about what I feel, whether by having my eyes closed and thinking about that people that I love or looking out into the audience and watching someone dancing. A better musician is more of a conduit for the energy rather than the source of the energy. And the same is true for songwriting.

DB: You've been playing with the core members of Max Creek for a while now, what does that familiarity bring to your performances?

SM: When I jam with other people that's when I really notice what we have. There are some things that happen that are totally unexplainable. There is interaction there that goes beyond words, that I can't even explain. The core relationships are filled with all the things a marriage is filled with. When you've been with people week in and week out for twenty eight years, you know way too much about them. You love these people for who they are, and you love them for all the shit that you hate them for too. But when we get up there and play, and it happens, there's no beating it. You just can't touch it. When we're out there in an improvisation, at a point where there is no form, there are times when it's just unbelievable. There are moments when I am a spectator, where I am inside of my head looking at my hands which are playing stuff that I have no clue where it's coming from. It's like you perform these tasks to get it started but then as it goes on it builds its own energy mass and the next thing you know you’re no longer inputting into it, it's inputting into you. It’s taking over. There will be these moments when I'll think "Whoa, this is unbelievable," and I'll look over at John and he'll be like "Yeah, this is unbelievable," and it's happening to everybody at the same time. When it happens, everybody knows. The audience knows. It's a magical thing, and no one person is responsible, it's just a whole vibration that everyone is resonating to.

DB: Let's talk about your big festival, Camp Creek.

SM: It's one of the shows I most look forward to every year. The first one was in Connecticut in 82. Then we did three or four up in Maine and then we took a few years off. What happened was these were one shot deals. We'd burn our bridge. They'd tell us "You can't come back here, that was too much." Well we found this place out in New York, the people who run it, as long as you don't bring glass or light fires, they are absolutely pleased to have us there. The setting makes it feel like you're isolated from the rest of the outside world for the weekend. The thing I like about this is it's our festival, we're running the show. If I feel like going up and doing a set then I go up and do a set. We try to vary the other acts to expose our audience to as many musical styles as possible and introduce everybody to everybody. We try to promote musician camaraderie and jamming. In fact there's a lot of playing that takes place off stage and that's really gratifying as well.

DB: Who are some of the favorite people you've had the opportunity to play with?

SM: Playing with Merl (Saunders) a few weeks ago was personally memorable for me. It looks like we're going to do more stuff with him too. Every time Mike Gordon has sat in with us, it has been a great experience.

DB: You've known him for a while. That must have been interesting watching his career develop.

SM: You know people are always saying "It must piss you off that Phish is so successful, you were doing what you were doing long before they were and blah blah blah." Phish is great. I think Trey has excellent compositional abilities. I have great respect for them, and I love every one of them as a player. I think they work their asses off, and I have a lot of respect for that. People are always asking is there tension between you and Phish, well not as far as I'm concerned, and not as far as anyone else in my band or their band that I know of. I don’t think there is any tension there, that's a myth. Some people just love that kind of stuff. (editor's note- a few days after this interview took place, Scott joined Phish on stage at the Tweeter Center for "Possum," and "Tuesday’s Gone.")

I'll tell you a story about Mike though. He used to come out to shows when we were playing in Vermont. Well one time he taped the show, brought it home and transcribed one of my guitar solos. Then the next time we played up there he brought the sheet music for me. He said, "I wrote out one of your guitar solos, I was just trying to figure out what you were doing." All I could say was "Wow. Thanks."

DB: One final question,. not to lay all this elder statesman crap on you, but do you have any words of wisdom for younger people out there just getting started on the guitar, thinking about putting together their first band?

SM: Let me just quote some other people for that. First, "the best musician knows when not to play." Someone told me that as a teenager and it's one that has stuck with me. The other one, which I think is attributable to Dizzy Gillespie, is "Learn as much about music as you can and then forget all that shit and play."