A Fresh Start with Page McConnell

First Appeared in The Music Box, May 2007, Volume 14, #5

Written by John Metzger

For Page McConnell, the events of the past few years could be described as a period of self-discovery. After Phish disbanded, he essentially withdrew from the music business in order to plot his next move. Retreating to his newly constructed home studio in Vermont, McConnell began working on new material, though initially he was writing for an audience of one. "I didn’t know exactly what I was doing," he explained. "There was very little of an agenda. It was much more about the process. It could have become anything — from writing demos that other people would record to making my own album."

It wasn’t until a year later that McConnell realized that he had been creating his solo debut. "I guess the deciding factor was just that I had enough material and that I had been working at it long enough that I had a body of work that seemed to hold together," he said.

"There did seem to be some cohesiveness. I guess it shouldn’t be such a surprise because it was all coming from me at the same time, relatively speaking. I hold together, so I guess hoped that the songs would, too," he added with a laugh.

Previously, McConnell had penned Army of One and the instrumental Cars, Trucks, Buses for Phish as well as several tracks for Vida Blue, a project he formed with bass player Oteil Burbridge (Allman Brothers Band, Aquarium Rescue Unit) and drummer Russell Batiste (Funky Meters) while Phish was on hiatus. Still, his experience at writing songs was, by his own admission, limited.

"It’s not something that necessarily comes naturally, so I have to lock myself into a room to do it," he stated. "Then, I have to go back over it to see if there are themes in the writing."

Further elaborating upon his process, McConnell said, "Hopefully, I have a melody that I’m working with. Sometimes, it’s the other way around, where I’ll just start writing and a melody will come out of the words. So, it can go either way."

"It wasn’t so much a process of writing because different songs really took different courses," he explained. "The first song that I wrote was Beauty of a Broken Heart. That was one that I’d been working on for quite awhile — even before the two years that I spent with this project. It was something I came up with by just trying to write down words and to have the words inspire melodies."

"It tends to be a sort of stream of consciousness process for me," he declared. "When it’s working, I’ll just be sitting down with my pad of paper and writing. If I can write down three or four pages of lyrics...and some of these lyrics — a lot of times, I’ll have a tune in my head or a melody that I’ve already started working on — if I can grab a line or even a couple of lines that make sense...."

"Sometimes the words that I’m writing down aren’t even real words," he continued. "They’re just sort of sounds that seem to fit over the melody. I have to go back later and interpret my handwriting, which is sometimes the biggest challenge. But, I go back and pull lines out that seem to fit together or make sense or tell a story or something like that. I try not to have too much forethought in the process. I try to figure out what happened afterwards."

"I think what did come through...there’s been a lot of transition for me in the last few years and a lot of different things going on so I...," McConnell’s voice trailed off as he stopped to ponder this thought for a moment. "...That’s probably what came out, although I never intended to write about anything in particular."

As with most songwriters, McConnell’s process was therapeutic and cleansing. His approach meant that he was able to put his innermost thoughts and feelings about Phish’s demise as well as the dissolution of his marriage into perspective. At times on his self-titled album, these two dramatic events in his life seem to become intertwined in his words and music. Beauty of a Broken Heart, for example, began in a different place from where it wound up on his self-titled album, and it is, perhaps, the piece that best marks the changes that took place within his own mind.

"Beauty of a Broken Heart went through a number of different lyric changes, and there is a demo of it, which — and I’m not trying to sell this — for anyone who is curious, is on iTunes. The Beauty of a Broken Heart demo has a completely different feel than the track that ended up on the album. It’s much darker and sort of...I don’t know what words to describe it...it just kind of was a different version and a different approach to it."

Were Phish’s final years — which had been marked a hiatus, a reunion, and an eventual split — as difficult for McConnell as they appear to have been based on the lyrics to his new songs? "I don’t know," he responded. "It was a long run. It wasn’t an easy breakup, and it wasn’t...I don’t know. I liked the hiatus. It was during that time that I developed Vida Blue, and started doing all that stuff. I suppose you’re right. I hadn’t really thought about it, but sure."

As challenging as Phish’s breakup was for him, McConnell remains close to his former collaborators. When asked what he misses most about the band, he took a long moment to reflect upon the question, but rather than providing a pat, premeditated, politically correct, publicist-approved answer — as most artists would do — he delivered a decisive, heartfelt response: "I really enjoyed the camaraderie of it — just being out there. It was a lot of laughs. It really was — a lot of stupid inside jokes and that sort of thing. I’m still close with all those guys, which is great. I still have that to some degree, but it’s...I suppose it would be just that."

"I don’t really miss the bigness of it, per se," he added. "I don’t miss the tens of thousands of people that we had at our festivals. I don’t miss the bigness of the organization that was necessary to carry on those festivals. I don’t miss the traveling at all, really. I enjoy staying at home."

When asked if there was a sense of relief or release that came when the decision to disband Phish had been finalized, McConnell replied, "Yes, yes, definitely. Absolutely. I had been doing it for so long, playing the same songs over and over again to the same people over and over again. I enjoyed it, but there was a sense of suspended animation, I suppose. To be able to look forward with endless boundaries and possibilities was both a relief and a release."

McConnell’s thoughts regarding Phish’s hectic existence not only inform, but they also permeate Heavy Rotation, one of the finest moments on his eponymous endeavor. It also is a song that underwent radical change over the course of the project. "I had written a demo that I was actually very happy with. It was never quite there but I thought it was really close," he explained. "I wrote it with a drum machine and synthesizers, and I had Jon Fishman play some drums on it, too. It had sort of a swing feel, but I ended up re-tracking it when I got to the end stage of the process."

Working with Mike Gordon as well as drummer Jim Keltner and guitarist Adam Zimmon, McConnell turned the tune into an expansive jam. His backing band created a funky underlying groove, while his distinctive piano accompaniment, which soared over the top, was informed by his love of jazz. "The song had a completely different personality than when I had done the demo of it," he said. "What I thought was the final track wound up being the demo."

McConnell’s shift to the Brooklyn studio where Heavy Rotation was completed was spurred by his decision to finish the record. "I decided to go and record with Bryce Goggin, who I had worked with before [on Farmhouse]," he stated. "I had already been working on it for more than a year and half, and I wanted to get some fresh ears and some fresh perspective on it."

Signing with Legacy was designed specifically to help McConnell achieve his goals for the self-titled outing. "I know a lot of people just put stuff out on the internet, and that’s certainly an option — especially these days and especially if you’re catering to the Phish fans who already know who I am. But I wanted a little bit more than that," he explained. "I was proud of the record, and I wanted as many people as possible to hear it when I was done with it."

McConnell’s enthusiasm for his eponymous effort also extends to his return to the stage. He recently assembled a new band that features multi-instrumentalist Jared Slomoff and guitarist Adam Zimmon, both of whom performed on the album, as well as bass player Rob O’Dea (Spam Allstars) and drummer Gabe Jarrett (Vorcza). The ensemble made its debut at a pair of shows in April — at WXPN’s World Café in Philadelphia and at the Gramercy Theater in New York City — and tickets already are on sale for his late spring jaunt along the East Coast and through the Midwest. "I have a really good feeling about this group. It feels like a band, although it’s in its infancy right now. It really does feel like there is a collective consciousness, and we all seem to get along pretty well. We have similar senses of humor, and we are interested in being explorative in the same sorts of ways," he said.

"In a certain sense, I really am starting over," McConnell stated, before adding, "but Phish afforded me the luxury of being able to spend two years working on a record. A lot of people don’t have that luxury. It also afforded me the ability to start at a prominent level. I have a nice base [of fans] and a record label that is excited about having me. I have an infrastructure, too. Probably the hardest thing for me to get used to is being the leader of the band. That was difficult when I was doing Vida Blue. It’s not that it’s going to be hard for me. It’s just something that I’m growing into."

"I’m already working on material for a new album, and that excites me, he continued. "Every free moment that I have, I’m in the studio trying to write. I’m excited to see what happens with this ensemble and to see if it really does jell and take on some new life. I think it will go to some cool places. I’m excited for all of that."

"I’m feeling really good about it myself," he concluded, "and that’s kind of the most important thing right now — that I’m happy with it, and feeling like it’s a good thing. And, I do."

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Copyright © 2007 The Music Box