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WEHM All Access - Great South Bay Music Festival - Ernie & the Band · WEHM All Access

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's EHM All Access for the Great South Bay Music Festival, and looking forward to a whole bunch of different performances this weekend, including Saturday on the band show at 720.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's Ernie and the band, and joining me is John Witt and Rob Sack.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: John and Rob, how are you?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Good, yeah.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for doing this.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Excited about this weekend out at the Great South Bay Music Festival.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: And uh a chance to kind of learn about all the bands that are performing this year.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I wanted to sit down with you guys and kind of go a little bit over your history.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: If I'm not mistaken, you guys have done the festival uh before a few times.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we did.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um we the first one was back in 2018.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: We played for the first time, just feels like a while ago now.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then um, and then we took a few years that we we didn't play it, and then we came back, and this will be this will be the fourth time now that we're playing it.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow, looking forward to this.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and only I think you guys became a band well only a year before uh the Great South Bay Music Festival, back in in 2017.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Now I have to ask, because I was looking over the the roster of everyone in the bands, but I also read your webpage.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh for people that don't know, there is no Ernie in the bands.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but uh tell me the kind of the philosophy and how this concept emerged uh for the name of the band and kind of how you guys operate.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um we the the whole idea of Ernie and the band is you know, we're we're the band, but we play, we love playing live.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's usually the way that we you know enjoy playing the most.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: We play live as much as we can.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: So with that in mind, that the people that come enjoy the show that aren't in the band are Ernie.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's a collective thing.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just you go out to see the band.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're you're in the in the field of the music, you know, that they they matter too.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're the Ernie, we're the band, you know.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: We work together on it.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Where did the name Ernie come from?
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: I I John and the band would be pretty weak.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: But Ernie's cool, you know.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's funny, there are a lot of artists that are that name.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so it's interesting.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: I was at first, I was like, oh well, get to speak to Ernie.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: I expected that, and I was a little surprised.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: But this is this is a fun concept.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: What is um to you guys and for both of you uh to answer, uh, what does a musical community mean in your own words?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what does that mean to each of you?
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of somewhere where like it's really uh welcoming, which is like the biggest thing for us, is and the Ernie thing.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: You can go there and you don't have to know anyone's name.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone's Ernie, people you pass around like, oh Ernie.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um so the community is the biggest thing, and just that everyone's there to just have a good time, kind of get away from everything that's stressing them out, enjoy music for four hours, see their friends, you know, and yeah, just have a good time.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: And John.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I would I would probably say pretty similar.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's right, the idea of of you you leave leave uh the the regular day-to-day world for a little bit and and the community aspect, you know, even just people that have come out to see us that started seeing us in 2017 or 2018 when we first started playing, some of those people still come to see us now and have become great friends with people who started seeing us, you know, a month or two ago when you know they they saw us for the first time, and now they they hang out whether we're playing or not, some of them, you know.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: But I think that's the the music community music.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: What even if you're not just seeing music, it brought people together that now have you know friendships beyond what we are probably even aware of playing, you know.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: That makes sense.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: John and Rob, your your musical backgrounds, I'm curious if you can each kind of touch on what kind of shaped the band's direction.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: Where where did each of you come from musically before this band started?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I I played guitar since I was young, you know, like 12, 13, started playing guitar.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh I I left for college when I was a senior in high school, still playing, then never really in a band.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh went for a semester, wasn't necessarily for me, came home and went to Rob and was like, I'm starting a band and you're playing bass.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how this is gonna go, basically.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we both didn't have too much going on.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and then you know, from there we picked people along the way that some of States and Alcong, but the two of us have always been the the you know consistent thing with the band.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then Rob just started playing bass, and basically it was like within a year he was like better than better than most of the bass players I played with, which was crazy.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: What uh what role did does improvisation, I imagine, quite a bit play in especially when the band was first starting out?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh because you wanted to kind of find your voice and your sound.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, what role did improvisation take place uh with this project?
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was kind of like the forefront of it.
• 4:48
  unknown: Yeah.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um obviously, like we had our songs, we were learning songs, but you know, we took from like the dead was a big influence.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so we'd get out there, and that's kind of how we like really I feel like catapulted our playing like the kind of messed us together a lot.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um by improv like on stage, you got to really know everyone's voice.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then you very quickly get to like, oh, John's playing a little lick, I know where he's going, kind of ideas like that.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: So and then that makes like when we get out on the stage, we don't really have like a set list.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So the whole show's kind of improvised in that sense.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like, oh, we look out and we want to you know party and we want to dance, we're gonna improv right into something that's grooving like right away.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: Certainly.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: What how do you keep those extended jams like fresh and and unpredictable?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_02: How do you keep them new each time?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's a I you know, just not trying not to get stuck in any boxes, you know, would be the biggest thing.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like when you hope see something happen, and if there's a point that you can do something different, try to do something different, you know.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned the dead and their influence on you guys.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: What other artists did you guys grow up listening to that kind of shaped your musical sound?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I we the Allman brothers were really, really big, but for a long time we we played a lot of Beatles, you know.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um we played David Bowie, not like non-stop.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: That was like before even The Dead really came over to playing a lot of stuff like that.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of like how we learned to play together, was that stuff.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: But then yeah, once the dead came in, it kind of just ate up everything else, I feel like.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that was that was where our brains went too.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, then fish and all and brothers and stuff like that.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: And cover with Mule, honestly, that's you know, Warren's big one.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: So how do you guys how do you guys write?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because uh obviously with the the lyrics and the and the music coming together, how is that process for the band?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_02: How did where does an idea start?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: Where does a song begin?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of notes in the notes app and a lot of long recordings.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's usually typically for at least probably say like 80, 90 percent, Rob and I will sit and whether it's just Rob, but a lot of times Rob will have an idea, or maybe I'll have an idea, and then we'll just start building off that idea.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, and the other members of the band do contribute a pretty good bit.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: We have Nick on drums, Ben on keys, and Brady plays percussion.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, as we show them that the skeleton of what we'll come up with, they'll add on top of that too.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: Is it is it interesting?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: I'd imagine you go in kind of knowing everyone's strengths and kind of trying to figure out a part for for everyone in in these songs.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um how what is that like to because you mentioned bringing everyone in, how long does it take to kind of write a song from start to finish?
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it could take like some of them really happen fast.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like some goes from like the idea, just like the melody finding it, to showing the band could take like just two days.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and a big thing, like we don't really give cards to anyone.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we just come in, show them the skeleton, and right off the bat we just start playing, and then it's just kind of you know, feel your way into what feels right.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, if we get a little too into it, and then you know, we could be like, okay, maybe this part you can do something here, but for the most part, we all just kind of find our way.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we also have songs too that we started writing like two, three years ago and are still like every now and then we'll be like, oh, we gotta we gotta work on that when it will start, and then it falls away, you know.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: So some day I still are unfinished from years, you know.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Are you guys looking to write and kind of record more and put more, I guess, studio versions of things down?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, we definitely are.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: We just did a little uh little recording session to start get an album started, but you know, it just takes a lot of time to get that stuff going.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we we were like, Yeah, we're gonna get in there, maybe we'll get everything done and we'll have an album out by Great South Bay, but that's not the way it went.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, so we're definitely working on that, actively working on doing that.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you want to take the band?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um and because you guys have been almost a decade now.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, where do you where do you see taking this in the future?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: Because obviously you want to work on new music, but where do you uh wanna wanna I guess grow as a as a band?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: I as far as we can go, you know, that'd be we're we're pretty happy when we're just playing in our practice space, you know, so it's like there's no there's no uh too too small by any means, but uh the bigger the better, you know.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: Where does collaboration come in?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because I know you guys are friends with a lot of different bands uh in the area.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what's that like?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: And what have you what I guess if there are there a few bands that have been a good influence on you and and have kind of work with and collaborate with?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a good question.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's so many.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the the awesome thing about the type of music that we play and how how many other bands there are in like our local area alone that also play them is you know, we get to have people sit in and play with us, or we play with them, either way.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, because there's like a collective, you know, almost like jammed standards of knowing, you know what I mean?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like of this dead song or this fish song that kind of everybody knows.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we definitely get to play with everyone, you know, any given guitar player, bass player, drummer in the scene, which is, you know, especially 10 years ago when we got to it was insane, you know, that it's a kickstart to learning how to play fast.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: And now it's just like a draw for inspiration.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Usually it ends up, like you said, being different from the way that we would just play.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have another guitar player from another band, which is just doubles the excitement, you know.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_02: How do you how do you get ready for you've done the festival a few times now?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: How do you get ready for a festival set as opposed to some other shows?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what's the main difference?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: The the the time constraint, you know.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because we, you know, if we're playing a four-hour show and we start a song and that song could either be we could jam on it for a minute or 20 minutes.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, at at the festival, if we were to jam on something for 20 minutes, that you know takes up a real good chunk of your night.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, you want people that hear hear more than one or two songs, so we got to keep it somewhat in mind of of not going too far off.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're gonna go off, but not too far, you know.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: That makes a that makes a lot of sense.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh coming up Saturday at the Great South Bay Music Festival, Ernie and the bands.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: And uh how have you watched uh the concept?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you've mentioned where you've got listeners or and fans that are a month old and they get along with the ones that have been there for the for the decade.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, how has it changed though?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: How have you seen it change from the stage with the audience?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: People are a lot more willing to dance now than they were when we first started.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: It was they would we'd be playing and there was a big open circle that no one we actually have a couple specific fans that we thank for it because they at some point broke the circle, and then everybody was way more comfortable.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: So now newcomers just walk in and see a big dance party and they're ready to get right in it, you know.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Which we have a couple earnings to thank for that.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: We we thanked most of them for sure, but you know you guys started literally right before a couple years before the pandemic.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, what was that like as a band?
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: And and what kept you guys together through that period?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we we we're all still playing a lot.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: We weren't playing out anywhere, you know what I mean?
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: There was no live, but we all had a lot more time on our hands, so there was a lot of practice, individual stuff, a lot of gear was bought.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Just buying with music equipment, you know.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it definitely didn't it didn't tear us apart in the sense of like friendship or anything like that.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: We did we were all still in good contact, but yeah, it was definitely weird because we were just starting to play a lot in like 2019 and then all of a sudden it stopped.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: But I think how often how many shows do you normally do uh in a in a month?
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because I don't get the festival coming up, but uh, how many gigs is it?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: Because uh you guys have other jobs, I'd imagine.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: How do you kind of process and and kind of schedule this whole thing?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: I guess as it comes up, we try not to play too much, you know, because if you play in one area too much, then you know your crowd gets spaced out.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: But it realistically, if we can spread them out, we could we'll play twice a weekend, you know, if if the allotment works, so maybe eight times at most, I would say.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: But that's like a that would be a pretty hectic month, you know.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: What do you guys do during the day as far as other other stuff to keep this going?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: We both work at the Blue Point Brewery in Patch Ock.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, nice.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: So so we get to see a lot of that.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's interesting because I've spoken to a lot of bands and a lot of open mic hosts, and they get to see different talent.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: How has that job shaped your view of working with uh with other bands and kind of saying, hey, I want to collaborate with this person, or this person's really talented, let's work with them.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we that's at we're at work and all of our favorite bands play there, so we've gotten to know them probably better from working there than we have from even just you know, the they're walking off as we're walking on stage, or vice versa.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the bands play at set break, we hang out or after work, we end up hanging out with them.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's definitely it's probably made a huge impact, probably bigger than we often think, you know.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: So totally no, thank you very much for the sit-down.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's nice to get to know you guys and to see where you're what direction you're taking the band.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: I can't wait for some new music down the road.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: And can't wait to see you perform on Saturday, um, out at the Great South Bay Music Festival.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, fourth time there, and uh, I'm sure the set will be uh nice and fresh.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you very much for for chatting with us.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate it.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you, thank you, Rob, appreciate it, and uh we'll see you out there at Shrofront Park in Padge.