A Conversation with Joe Pisapia (continued)

PM: Well, if Ryan is like that, what's Brian like?

JP: Like I said, when I first met those guys, I was more friendly with Ryan at first. He was the guy that he would call me, or I would call him, or whatever. Brian sort of downplays his role in the band on the outside. He's kind of a comedic genius, like with his road journals and stuff like that. He's got a real funny way of looking at stuff.

PM: Right.

JP: But he's very, very involved in everything. He's very attentive to all the details. That guy can go into the details like no other.

PM: Wow.

JP: And from a production standpoint, you know what I mean, like when you're in the studio with that guy, he knows every single thing that's going on. Beyond what you do--and you're looking at the computer screen, or whatever.

PM: Damn!

JP: He knows it beyond what you--

PM: But he knows about the compressor setting that you're heading toward and stuff.

JP: He doesn't know about that stuff, but all the parts and all the timing of all the parts and all the tones.

PM: Oh, all the musical parts.

JP: Yeah, he knows everything that's going on, and what's going to make it, and what's not, in his mind. And he's very opinionated about that stuff. And almost like where Ryan is the melody scientist, Brian is like an overall--I don't know, it's weird, he's very attentive to all that stuff, and kind of a perfectionist.

PM: And as a personality, is he on the serious side, or he's more on the comedic side that you'd see in his road journals?

JP: It kind of goes back and forth. He can snap one to the next.

PM: Right.

JP: Like you'll be joking around, and then all of a sudden the track will run by, and he'll be like, "Right there. We got to work on that." Brian is always on.

PM: So do you feel like you're musically--are you being used in a very full way? Are your vast--what I consider your vast abilities as a musician tested and all that?

JP: Yeah, I would say so. In ways that I wouldn't have expected, too. For instance, we sat in a room and wrote these songs together for the Ganging Up On The Sun. And really, the biggest thing was that melody thing. So we'd work on the chorus for four days on that song, like every day.

PM: Wow!

JP: Yeah, just to try and... And then the things that they would end up signing off on would always surprise me, because I would never really know how they arrived at it.

PM: Right.

JP: You know what I mean? [laughs] It would always be a mystery. Whereas, I would have like maybe five options in my head that would all be worth pursuing, and whatever you chose, if you were feeling it, I would just go with it and make it into something.

PM: Yeah.

JP: Whereas they would be like--

PM: Sure that it was this.

JP: Yeah, sure that it was that. And when it was done I'd be surprised sometimes. That was the one that made it? [laughs]

PM: "Why was it that?" Yeah, right.

JP: Like when you were talking before about the melody science, like they don't talk about it that way. It's more internal where they just have this sense of what they want to hear, and that's it. So my role is really just to keep throwing out ideas. And the good thing about me is I'm just like, "All right. Here's an idea. Here's an idea." Because I always have so many riffs that I'm playing around with, or whatever.

PM: Right. And that's how they see you, right, as the idea guy?

JP: Yeah, part of my role is that guy. And then it changes as we go through the progression. It changes as we go through the writing and stuff.

PM: So are you on all of those tunes with the guys?

JP: On the new record?

PM: Yeah.

JP: Yeah. We just sort of wrote all those together.

PM: That's beautiful.

JP: Except for there's a few that you could tell where one guy was the main guy. Like on "Lightning Rod," for instance, the opening track, Ryan brought that idea in himself, and it was pretty much done. We just added parts to it, basically. But for the most part, everything else--and you could tell--you could probably hear the ones that were more like my things, and then--

PM: Oh, yeah, I could hear Joe in a number of songs, very perceptibly.

JP: And then there were some that Adam brought in that were mostly him. And then Adam, he's a different kind--whereas Ryan and Brian, you'd see them as kind of a team; you know what I mean?

PM: Ah.

JP: For lack of a better phrase, in this band, they're like the Lennon and McCartney, I would think.

PM: Ryan and Brian?

JP: Yeah.

PM: Ah.

JP: In a way. They'll really sort of take that role. You know what I mean? Whereas Adam is sort of more easy-going about stuff. He's got this sort of Zen attitude about things.

PM: Yeah.

JP: He's more like me. You know?

PM: Right.

JP: A little more like the way I am. But yet, he'll be like, "You know I'm not like those guys. I don't get into the minutiae "--but he does.

[laughter]

PM: And it's interesting that the two Zen guys are the Jersey guys. He's from Jersey, too, right? [Adam and Joe, that is.]

JP: That's right. Maybe that's a natural reaction to the environment.

PM: [laughs] Yeah, not known as the Zen capital, few people know that a lot of the greatest women and the Zen-filled minds come from Jersey.

JP: Because you got to be, if you're going to sit in traffic for hours. And then Adam's big into this nonprofit stuff, the environmental initiative that he and his wife started called Reverb, which has taken off really great. I mean, he's one of those guys that inspires me, and makes me feel like, "Man, what the hell am I doing for service?"  You know?

PM: Wow! Really?

JP: He's really busting his ass--on tour, for instance, we're trying to green our tour as much as we can.

PM: In what ways?

JP: Well, we have biodiesel running the buses. And we found a bus company that will allow us to run biodiesel, right here in Nashville. And then he convinced the trucking company, called Janco, which does all this rock 'n' roll and Broadway stuff, to run biodiesel as well.

PM: Holy jeez!

JP: And then he's got offsets, where we'll do a show--let's say we're playing Starwood Amphitheater or something, all the power that's used from the grid for that one day--which is a surprising amount. I mean, it's like a household for I don't know how many months.

PM: Really?

JP: Oh, yeah, it's crazy. And Adam will set it up so that that gets replenished to the grid in wind power.

PM: How does he do that?

JP: There are these things called green tags.

PM: Oh, green tags, right.

JP: Yeah. And you just basically buy X-amount. You see what the thing is, and you offset it. And he and his wife, she'll communicate with the bus drivers and say, "Here's where you're going to pick up biodiesel tonight, and here's where you're going to"--because they kind of have to go a little bit out of their way sometimes, or schedule--one tour they did where they were delivering it every day.

PM: Wow. And the whole band, obviously, is okay with Adam's activities in that direction?

JP: Well, I think that everybody sort of gets behind it. And it's great that he takes on the whole burden of it. But he's got all these other bands doing it. Like he got Dave Matthews to write a huge check for his career, basically, to offset his career retroactively.

PM: Oh, my God!

JP: Yeah. [laughs]

PM: What a guy!

JP: Yeah. And he's got the Barenaked Ladies doing this Bare Naked Planet thing. And he's got all these bands that are doing this stuff. And now bands are contacting him in England and Europe and going, "We want to do the biodiesel thing over here. We want to do the offsets over here." And he's kind of starting to get into that, like more global stuff.

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