Chris on site, the day prior to Super Ball IX – Photo by Dave Vann © Phish 2011

Shortly before Phish’s Super Ball IX, Umphrey’s McGee lighting director Jeff Waful spent some time on the phone with Phish’s l.d. Chris Kuroda. While the initial purpose of the call was for a Q&A that ran in festival’s onsite newspaper, Ball Things Reconsidered, which we posted last week, – the conversation became surprisingly personal and candid between the two as they discussed the struggles of life on the road, artistic drive and emotional escapism.

Look for more with Kuroda on an upcoming episode of Jeff Waful +1.

You texted me the other night around 2 a.m. after a Phish show and said that you wanted to talk about life, not lights. What’s on your mind?

I just was sitting and thinking how interesting it is that this lifestyle is so unique compared to your 9-to-5 cubicle-going person. I reflecting on that and could just go on and on about how different [a job on the road is] and how it affects us and the things that we miss that go on in our family and personal life that we’re often not present for ‘cause we’re out here. It’s very unique and it takes a toll on us and those around us in a way that many people don’t understand.

Was there something specific that was going on that day that prompted you to text me?

I’m at a point in my life where it’s all starting to really take its toll on me and those around me. It’s been making the relationships that I have a little more trying. My daughter just turned eight and she’s at an age where she’s really dialed in to the whole thing and very aware of the fact that I’m missing things that are very important to her. She realizes that she’s kind of being single-parented. [My wife and I have] known it for a long time but she’s finally starting to clue into it as well and is asking questions to my wife like, “Why does Daddy miss everything?” “Why is he not here for my birthday? Why did he miss my piano recital? Why does he miss everything?”

It makes you stop and reflect a little bit. As long as I’m a touring person who makes his living by getting on airplanes to go to work, that’s something that’s going to consistently still be happening until I either retire or take a different path. It makes one ponder and reflect in a way that you have to make a decision and say, “Well this is what I’ve always done. This is what I do. This is what I’m best at, but these are the sacrifices that I’m making and these are the sacrifices that the people around me are making.”

As time goes on, you start to see those burdens get heavier and heavier on everybody you know. I’m in my mid-40s now and it catches up to you after a while and it makes you wonder what you’re giving up to live this life. What are the people around me giving up to let me live this life?

I can certainly relate, even being about ten years behind you. I go through the course of the day setting up, which is my least favorite part of the job, and questioning “Why am I doing this?” but then the magic of that three hours when the band is onstage happens and it’s affirming like, “Oh ok, now I remember why I do this.” You get that rush and it’s those magical moments that cause us to make these types of sacrifices, I suppose.

That’s very obviously why – that’s a very big piece of the pie as to why we like to do this. As you take yourself out of the responsibilities of being a husband, a father, a partner, even a friend – because a lot of my friendships have suffered because of my lack of presence in my personal life – it all comes down to having the opportunity to present your art to people and finding that they seem to like it. There’s a very personal satisfaction that goes into what we do. The three-hour Phish show is why I do this. I don’t do this to setup. I don’t do this because I enjoy drawing architectural plots at home and things like that. It all comes down to when the house lights go out. That’s why we’re here. That’s an incredibly powerful entity and that one single entity seems to outweigh so many other entities that make up the whole of a person.

I’ve thought about what I would do if I wasn’t a lighting designer and I’ve often worried that I wouldn’t get that same creative stimulation. You could work in a local club somewhere but wouldn’t get that same connection from lighting the same band every night the way you have for your entire career and having that creative control.

No, absolutely not. It’s funny. When I speak about this subject, my joke is always, “What am I supposed to do, put on a blue Walmart vest? Hello, may I help you?” I’d be coming home every night, everybody would be happy in many different ways, but I would be incomplete in many different ways. I’m not saying that I can predict that I’d be unhappy – because a lot of happiness comes from being a husband, being a father and being a partner. There’s tons of happiness that goes along with that, so I couldn’t try to compare the two and guess how I would be feeling. I can definitely predict that feeling of incompleteness because in order to feel complete in my adult life I have become an artist – so art is what completes me.

Maybe you’ll pursue a different type of art someday. I hope that you don’t step down anytime soon, but perhaps in the future there’d be some way to get that same artistic outlet without traveling.

It would be wonderful if something like that presented itself in the future and it would certainly merit attention. Who knows? I can’t predict what that would be, but my wife and I very seriously talk about starting a lighting company, a lighting business that would have nothing to do with performance and rock and roll. It would be more like home installations and finding really cool fixtures and having a unique way that we shop for fixtures. We could fill our business up with really cool, wonderful, unique, groovy lights and we both believe that could be really successful.

But again, that seems like a good path for me if I were to ever decide that I need to stay home. I would probably try to do something like that, however you’re still not being artistic. You’d still miss being out there – you’d still miss those feelings that you get when you do just the right thing at just the right moment for an unpredictable jamband; you hit right where you needed to hit without really knowing where it was going to go. There’re no words that can describe that feeling – at least for me. And that’s my whole world with this band. It’s just trying to pick and choose and find the right thing to plug in at the right time to make the whole moment perfect.

When we last spoke in 2009, you talked about Trey’s philosophy of “no mind” and trying to get to a point where you block out all of your thoughts; that you try to create a very Zen-like experience.

We’re still there.

When you’re having these thoughts about your family and being away, how do you block those out? Do you find lighting to be a cathartic experience once the music actually starts?

I’ve found that the burdens and stresses of life have played a major role in me not having a good night at the light board many, many times. I don’t know how to block that stuff out – [and] you really have to. You try your best, but – sometimes unintentionally – that stuff gets blocked out because I’m really enjoying what’s going on onstage and again, being present with where I am right now. But no, I cannot say I’m strong enough to block that stuff out. The burdens of life have definitely affected my night more times than they haven’t.

Sometimes you’re having this horrible day and then suddenly five minutes will go by and you realize you haven’t thought about anything and I think that it takes that special moment musically – that synergy between the lights and the music – to get you to that special place where you’re not worried about anything except for that moment.

You can’t make that happen. Either it’s going to happen or it’s not. It’s a trickle down theory. If I’m having a bad day because of stuff that’s going on in my personal life – and then the gig starts and it’s not distracting me enough from it – then I’m not having a good time out there at the light board. Those are the times I’m going to see all the teeny-weeny little things that are wrong in my lighting rig that normally I would just let roll off my shoulder. And those are the times that I’m going to take my headset off and start yelling at people in my crew for those things being wrong. Because regardless of what kind of mood I’m in, they’re supposed to be right and they’re not. But really my mood is very based on, “Oh I can live with that.” They know that it’s supposed to be right. They didn’t mean to intentionally make that wrong, whatever it may be.

It’s interesting because when I sit by myself in a dark room and think about who I am, those are the things that I don’t like about myself – the fact that I let those things get to me and I find myself taking my issues out on other people. The door opens a crack and I’ll explode through it if I feel like it. I don’t like the fact that I can be that person. I don’t want to take my shit out on the people that are around me, working for me and realistically trying their hardest to do the very best job they can for me. It’s not fair. But human nature dictates that sometimes we react that way. And then being out here, in a touring capacity, where it’s even more stressful, those things get to you after a while

I think it all comes out of the passion that we have as artists, whether as a lighting designer or a musician. We want it to be perfect every night.

That’s exactly it. We want it to be perfect and then you wonder if everyone around you knows you want it to be perfect.

*Are we just setting ourselves up for failure? Because you’re never going to walk away from a show and say, “That was 100% exactly how I wanted it to go.” *

I don’t think we’re setting ourselves up for failure as long as you know how to roll with the punches. I had a Phish show recently that was an incredible lesson on this for me.

I did a first set where everything was wrong: lights were hung in the wrong place, they were backward, they were addressed wrong, they had broken colors and it was a disaster. I was furious and angry. I walked away and went backstage. I sat in the crew room and got my head on straight and forgot about it all. I went back out to the light board and with the same broken rig, the same bad addresses, all the same problems that were there in the first set, wound up having probably one of the best second sets I’ve ever had because I changed my mindset.

I decided not to focus on everything that was broken and decided to try to focus on making it good the way it is. It’s amazing how we, being those people who are in control of turning those knobs and pushing those buttons, how our feelings really affect what goes on out there. All I did was change my mindset and I turned a horrible night into a great night, just by doing something personal inside myself as a human being.

This has been known as the sober era for Phish. Do you – both the band and crew – have to come up with new ways of changing your mindset? It seems like as people get older they turn to things like yoga, mediation and more exercise.

Everybody, especially the four band members – and I can speak for myself as well – have adopted similar ways [that] you’ve mentioned. Trey meditates and Fishman does his yoga. They all do many different varieties of those kind of Zen Buddha type of mind-clearing exercises. Whether it’s yoga, meditation, diet or exercise, it puts you in a good mindset and all four of these guys have adopted their own different ways to re-channel the energy that they channeled in such a negative way in the past. And it’s a cool, new positive way. But again, that all comes from education. These guys were smart enough to educate themselves, to know that there are other ways to channel their energy. People who don’t realize that you can do that who have been down the same road that we have – that same dark path – they wind up spending the rest of their life channeling their energy through anger and frustration. They’re not used to being straight and they’re mad about it. Everybody [in the band and crew is] very happy where they are today and with the philosophies that they’ve adopted to take that next step in the chapters of their lives, including myself.

Do you notice a difference in the music now as drugs – psychedelics at least – have traditionally gone hand in hand with improvisational music?

I do. I think it’s more solid in many ways and I think that the music itself is as motivating to them as it was before they started taking drugs. This band, before they started taking drugs, the music was everything to them. And the music was the high, and the presentation of the music was the high. To them, that was their drug. And I see it going back to that, like it was in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. I see that it’s the music that drives them. That’s a very healthy and positive, full-circle type of experience if you ask me.

How has that, in turn, affected the way that your style has evolved in the current era of Phish?

If anything, it’s made me need to be more precise. There’re no more 45-minute guitar loops where you basically can do anything and it looks fine. It’s made me need to pay attention more to what they’re doing because the jams are way more thought out now. They’re not reckless and out there. There’s a lot of precision to them. If you pay attention enough, you can listen and understand the musical thinking that’s going on at any given live moment. And it’s a lot more intelligent than it used to be.

Trey told Rolling Stone that there will be less tour dates next year.

I’ve heard that.

He cited “family obligations for some of the band members” as the main reason. So it sounds like you will have more time off the road. I’m curious as to what, if any, your plans are. Obviously you want to spend time with your family though, at the same time I assume, you need to work in some capacity.

When I poke around looking for work and get all stressed out trying to find work to fill the void because I need to make money, I usually wind up getting way too stressed out and don’t have that much success. But if I sit back and wait, for some reason the phone always rings with the perfect job. The other thing is I always assume that [the members of Phish] can’t sit still for as long as they think they can and something will pop up within this world, whether it be a Trey tour or maybe some Phish dates will come in the future where there’s not supposed to be any. I’m not saying that will happen, but that’s happened plenty in the past. It always seems to work itself out without me having to exert too much energy trying to find the next thing.

*It must be bittersweet when you get an offer for a new gig. On the one hand, it’s exciting you got the gig but then on the other hand you need to break it to your significant other, “Hey, I’m going back out on the road again.” *
I always let my wife make those decisions for me. That’s always been the way it is in my married life. Not with Phish – Phish is Phish – and there’s nothing anyone can do about that. But when I did Aerosmith, R. Kelly, when I got offered Clapton, Prince, Black Crowes, and on and on, I always say [to my wife], “I got this job offer. I’m leaving it up to you to decide whether I can go do it or not. If you need me here, for whatever reason, even if it’s an emotional reason, then I won’t go.” And my wife has always, so far, said “go.” But I leave the ball in her court.

What do you have in store for Super Ball IX this weekend? Are you involved in some of the site installations?

I’ve been here for a week programming site installation stuff. I am not at liberty to give any details whatsoever. That’s just not how we roll. It’s never been how we’ve rolled. We like to keep everything – I don’t want to say a surprise – but fresh. We don’t want the people coming in the front gates and know what they’re going to see, even though they’ve never seen it. We’d like them to have the full experience of going, “Wow! Look at that! I didn’t expect to see that here!”

I completely agree. I’m sure you don’t have anything to do with this, but in that vein, any idea why the band decided to start handing out playbills at the Halloween shows? The first couple years they did it, it was so great for the lights to go down for that second set and hear those first couple notes of that cover album and have that be a surprise. It was one of the best parts of the experience. But then they started handing out the playbills. It seemed so un-Phish-like to me.

This is just a guess, but I’m guessing that it’s been justified in the sense that, it being Phish and everybody that surrounds Phish [saying], “Hey, you know what? We don’t want to give it away by giving away the playbills and that’s what we’re doing.” But at the same time, [the fans] already know what we’re going to play. Everybody knows. Even though it’s a secret, they all know. It’s a secret that’s not a secret. Somebody somewhere – in a recording studio or a practice space or a publisher or a publicist or an archivist – somebody catches wind and tells one person and somehow the whole world knows. It’s the hardest secret to keep.