photo: Madison Dodd

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“A lot of my life seems surreal these days,” Oteil Burbridge reflects, while considering the range of musical opportunities that have come his way over the recent months. “It’s an embarrassment of riches, the variety of incredible things I get to do. I hadn’t played Jazz Fest in two years and this one was epic. I was with the Meters at the Saenger. I was with Nicholas Payton. I played Weedie Braimah and Adam Deitch’s birthdays. I played with The Heavyweights. Those shows with Grahame were just golden, man. I am a lucky, lucky boy.”

As he contemplates his Jazz Fest experience, Burbridge also touches on the emotional fluctuations that accompanied it. “When I was down there, I was thinking about my brother Kofi,” he acknowledges, “along with other people who have passed away that I love and otherwise would have seen, like Russell Batiste and Nick Daniels. You know how in a cartoon when someone gets shot with a shotgun and they look like Swiss cheese with these holes punched out of them? That’s how I felt at times. But then I’m on stage with The Meters at the Saenger Theatre, playing with my heroes, and it’s just crazy. I also saw so many of my friends down there, and these days I feel like every single moment is meaningful.”

Given the scope of opportunities presented to him, Burbridge affirms that he left it all on the field down in New Orleans. However, he indicates that it was well worth the effort: “Sure I burnt some wick doing all that, but one of the many things that Col. Bruce told me a long ago is you have to pursue your passion blindly. It was through playing with the Aquarium Rescue Unit that I found my way to the Allman Brothers and Dead & Company. So I just lean into my joy and the rest follows.”

The bassist is currently on the road supporting two long-gestating projects. His new album The Offering, is a collaboration with Lamar Williams Jr. that began 13 years ago when they first worked on a series of songs that they eventually recorded at Flóki Studios in Iceland with Weedie Braimah, Melvin Seals, Jason Crosby, Tom Guarna, Jaden Lehman and John Morgan Kimock. The Oteil and Friends collective that is now performing many of these tunes on tour, includes Williams, Seals, Crosby, Guarna, John Kimock and his father Steve.

He’ll also be gigging with the Toy Factory Project. That group, which is propelled by Paul T. Riddle of the original Marshall Tucker Band, honors the music of Toy Caldwell. In addition to Charlie Starr, Marcus King, Josh Shilling, Burbridge and Riddle, Sam Bush will be on board for the upcoming run of dates.

“Man, the Toy Factory thing is just remarkable,” Burbridge raves. “I’ve known Paul Riddle for so long. He used to come out and sit in with the Allman Brothers when we rolled through the Carolinas. Again, we had talked about doing this for 13 years. This is around the same time that I was first working with Lamar. It’s funny that all these things are coming to fruition now. There was a 13-year waiting period that the universe insisted upon, and now it’s harvest time.”

Turning back to Oteil and Friends, he adds, “The first two nights at the Ardmore were just magic. The more that stuff gets crazy out there in the world, the more it returns me to how I felt as a teenager, when music helped life make sense for me. If I’m feeling overwhelmed, I keep thinking of that line, ‘We used to play for silver and now we play for life.’ Well now we’re playing for our own sanity and for other people’s sanity. So while I do pinch myself and think, ‘How did I get here?’ I also think, ‘Man, we need it now more than ever—that feeling of playing in the Super Bowl.’ This is bigger than ever now.”

What do you remember of your initial visit to New Orleans?

I think it was with Col. Bruce and we were playing Tipitina’s. It was probably 1991. I remember Tyrone [Powell] who did the monitors. He would greet us every time we played there and open those back doors. He was just the sweetest guy, and someone else who’s passed away.

What a great first experience, man. Robert Palmer, the writer, came down to see us and he’s the one who gave us four stars in Rolling Stone when our album came out. He sat in with us playing clarinet and he was very mysterious to me. I was probably 26 when I met him

Ever since then, New Orleans has been my favorite place but I found out recently from a DNA test that I actually have relatives from there. I found out that I have a great, great grandmother and grandfather who were born and raised there. So now I’m like, “Wow, I have blood in New Orleans. No wonder I always feel so great there.” It’s my spot, man.

Unlike yourself, I can’t trace any lineage to New Orleans. Having said that, from the very first time I set foot in the city, there was something in the air, a certain ineffable quality that was calling out to me, and I continue to experience that whenever I’m ever in New Orleans.

I can tell you exactly what it is. They call it that old black magic. That’s what it is. Literally it’s the only place they let Black people keep their drums because of slave revolts. They were communicating with each other over many, many miles. So like eight different plantations would have a slave revolt at the exact same time across many miles and people would wonder, “How did that happen?” Then they realized, “Man, I heard drums right before.” So in most places they put a stop to that. But for some reason we were allowed to keep those drums at Congo Square. We wouldn’t have any music today with trap drums and that kind of stuff without Congo Square.

That’s the one place Africans also retained their religion too, because they syncretized it with the Christian saints. So you have the religion practice, you have some connection to the language and you also have the rhythms. The rhythms were a lot of the language. I know a lot of those rhythms, but I don’t know exactly what they mean. I would love to learn what those original things were.

That’s where Weedie Braimah comes in. I can decode all of it with Weedie and Cheikh [Ndoye], his bass player, who’s from Senegal. It’s a real thing that’s still hanging in the air.

There’s a curiosity that not only informs your music but also makes your podcast so fascinating. Is that something you feel you modeled from someone in your life?

I’m very lucky that I am my parents’ child and that I met Col. Bruce because he was the most curious person I ever met. Bruce knew so much about so many things. My dad and my mother were that exact same way—incredibly inquisitive and methodical in their research. When I ran into Col. Bruce, I was well prepared for his way of thinking mystically in terms of my mom, but also historically speaking and with an inquisitiveness that I got from both my mom and my dad.

Bruce really pointed me in the right directions. I can see how I got to this place where I’m trying to show people how this connects to that. It’s a game of synthesis. In music and in life, if you’re of a certain mind, you’re trying to see how everything is related. You have these 12 notes and it’s amazing how many different ways you can put those together. I tell my son that you can’t believe how endless it is with just 12 notes, but some ways seem to clash and some ways are very harmonious. Some are harmonious in ways that you might not be able to hear yet. Then later you go, “Oh, that’s two things I’ve put together that I didn’t think went together.” It’s like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

It’s a game of synthesis seeing how things are related, how everything is integrated. Yes, we’re all separate pieces, but we’re also the one.

I think it’s my job to see things that way historically, like how we got here, so I can understand better where we’re going and then share that with others. That’s what music has always done for me. That’s my parents’ ethos. That’s Col. Bruce’s ethos. That’s the Grateful Dead’s ethos—to draw people into something, to show them wonder and be like, “Look what’s in here. You should go down into that labyrinth because it’s really cool down there! And feel free to bring some friends!”

All the people we love, they do the same thing. Medeski just called me because he wants to have a book club on Zoom about Sun Ra’s Book of Information.

We found out about this book a while ago, and when we were out with Phish in like ’91, Fishman printed the whole thing out at Kinko’s. He printed out three or four copies and gave one of them to us. It was like having a Sun Ra Bible and we were like, “What is this wondrous clue? Let’s pursue it.” Fishman and Trey and Col. Bruce and all of us were searching for this magic skeleton key. We still are.

I was able to talk with Phil Lesh about this before he died. Bob Weir was still tinkering away with that amp sound right up until the end. It’s all just beautiful, man.

It seems like your decision to stick with the material you eventually recorded on The Offering ties in with all that. Can you talk about how the album came to pass?

At times I lose confidence in certain things I write that I think are too esoteric for people. Sometimes I lose sight of why I used to do it, but it’s like George Clinton says: “The funk is its own reward.”

When I started writing, it just came out of my head organically from learning the banjo, but I didn’t really have confidence in it.

I also had to put out a record first that I’d already been working on for a while. My wife was like, “You’ve got to put that record out.” I wanted to do the banjo thing but she quite properly told me, “You’ve spent 10 years on it already. See it through.” So I put that out. Then Nigel [his son] was born and the Allman Brothers ended. Then Dead & Co. happened, so I kept getting thrown off.

Years went by and I was like, “I want to do at least a couple of these tunes with Oteil and Friends.” So Lamar came down and we had rehearsals. I bought an electric banjo but then the pandemic happened, which created another series of complications.

Then a few years later I was like, “Okay, I’m going to try one more time.” So we put a couple of tunes in the set and we played them in Mexico when we were there for the Dead Ahead festival. We played “Love and War” and people just went nuts over it. I was like, “Whoa, I was wrong all these years. They love it.”

So we started playing more, and eventually the conversation became: “Maybe this should be the next record.” I was going to do another ballads record but then I was like, “I think we need to do this.” So we asked Flóki if we could go back to Iceland because I like to go where the magic is. They were into it, and when we went out there, it was just as magical as before, even more so.

You mentioned Weedie Braimah earlier. He was one of the players who joined you in Iceland. How did you envision his role in the music?

I wanted Weedie for that African element because the banjo comes from Africa, and what I’m trying to do is reunite it in a way through synthesis. I talk about seeing the connection between things because the banjo comes from Africa, which means there’s a connection with all this hillbilly music. We can reintegrate because it’s already in there. Bill Monroe took the Celtic tunes that he learned from his grandmother and merged that with the blues he learned from this old Black dude who blew his mind to create bluegrass.

So without Africa, there’s no bluegrass. There’s no country. We did a podcast about this. I talked with Bob Weir about it. Jimmie Rodgers recorded a whole record with Louis Armstrong.

What I’m doing with The Offering is playing Scruggs-style banjo—hillbilly style if you will—with finger picks because the claw hammer thing came from Africa. The Africans did it without picks. The three finger picks thing is Scruggs style and I like that. I can’t do it very well, not nearly as good as my friends who play banjo. I don’t play that fast or that clean or have tone that good. Maybe one day. We’ll see how many hours I commit to it.

But to bring these things back together with Weedie, I’m like, “See, it can work. We can all live together in the same song.” It’s all connected, man. That’s why I was intentional about it.

You’ve been introducing these songs into the live setting with a stellar group of like-minded, wide-ranging players. What is your approach to the Oteil and Friends repertoire?

It’s a really good time to be alive and to be older, man. As you get older, you go through heavier stuff, you lose more people, more of your friends are getting cancer and fighting whatever kind of battles. It’s heavy, man. Life is heavy. Our parents are passing, our friends are passing. There’s the gravity of it all and the beauty of it all is you also have a much greater appreciation for things when they’re good.

When we hit that stage for soundcheck at the Ardmore and Melvin just started playing this thing he does, it was like everything was right with the world.

It was unspoken, but the rest of us just looked at each other while Melvin was doing that and thought about how lucky we were to be alive with him right then, as he was working his magic.

It was magic, the real thing. Don’t let anybody tell you that’s not true. We were all just shaking our heads and smiling.

We went on to have one of the best nights we’ve ever had, and we got off stage going, “This is just too good to be true, man.” Then the next night was the same thing.

I know that every night on this tour I’m going to be thinking, “How lucky am I? Not only do I get to see Melvin, I get to play with him. I get to see if I can help him get carried away.”

Now that I’ve been playing with him for a long time, I know that he makes a certain face when he’s getting carried away, and I’m like, “Let’s see if we can get him to make that face.” Then if I can: “Oh, baby! It’s on now!”

I want to do everyone’s music. I tell all the guys, “If you have tunes, bring them.” Finally, they all are, even Melvin. I used to pound Melvin. He’d be playing something in soundcheck and I was like, “What’s that?” He’d say, “Oh, it’s not really finished yet.” I’m like, “Come on, bro!” But he gave us this tune “Lucky Strike.” Guarna gave us this tune “Just Around the Corner.” Jason had already given us an original tune of his called “Gambler’s Conceit,” but now he’s doing these mashups which are so cool. I love to see people’s reactions when we do the “Estimated” > “Money” mashup. Johnny Kimock is doing a tune called “Mother’s Song” and we do “Hillbillies on PCP” by Steve Kimock.

So I finally have original songs from every single person in the band. Then I just sprinkle in my old Peacemakers tunes and some Jerry ballads from Lovely View of Heaven. Now we’re throwing in stuff from The Offering. We’ll do some Dylan. We just kind of just mix it up. It’s like, “What’s the gumbo today?”

There’s this huge multi-songbook catalog of tunes in our brains and we splice them together. We did one the other day that involved “Liz Reed,” “Blue Sky,” “Franklin’s,” “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” and a James Brown tune in there somewhere. We’re just having fun and everybody knows so many tunes in common that we’re just like some old guys sitting around laughing and having fun telling jokes.

There’s an unspoken communication that sparks a lot of what you do with this group. Do you select bandmates who are particularly adept at tuning into those frequencies or do you feel it’s a trait shared by musicians in general?

I think it’s musicians in general. I’ve become much less judgmental about these things. It’s good to make sound. Bruce was very much a believer that we’re making sounds first, before music. We’re making sounds, but it’s with an intention. So I think none of it can be bad.

There’s a friend of mine who loves Phish, she loves the Dead, and she also loves Kenny G. She tells me, “That music just makes me feel good.” I believe that if a sound is made with the intention to make people feel good and it actually accomplishes that goal, then it cannot be bad. Now it might not be my taste but I’m not going to say if it’s good or bad anymore. It has to be good.

I think all soundmakers out there with that intention are participating in magic and opening up their psychic functioning. It will build empathy and it will make other people feel good and it will do everything it’s supposed to do.

You know how I calm myself now? Jesus [Coomes] the bass player with Lettuce hipped me to these albums of different birds. I can listen to a variety of them and they aren’t just calls. It’s music on a level. There’s such intricacy and variety of language. It makes my kids quiet. It’s deep, man.

I look at it as music, and as Sun Ra said: “I listen to the birds.” Kofi said it, too. Kofi would play like birds on his flute.

It’s some deep stuff, man. It’s about getting reconnected with nature. If you reconnect with all the forces of nature, which are super powerful and supernatural, then you are one of the expressions of nature. That means you have access to all the forces of nature, being one of the forces of nature.

That’s why certain people gaslight us because if we figure that out, the whole game’s over. If I could teleport, then catch me if you can. I’m free, man. We’re all free.

What did Col. Bruce say? “Never any reason to be not free. You’ll see. Put it all to music” [from “Time Is Free.”] I hear that like a mantra every day.

I had a long talk with Grahame about this. “What is it that we’re doing? What is it we believe?” I know why I was in the Brothers and the Dead. It’s because I believe that same religion—this thing we’ve been talking about in all different ways, musical and not, but expressed through the music and followed through the music. It’s that religion.

That’s why the Grateful Dead community is so different, and they are the ones who gave Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit a home.

I have heard Grahame articulate this in a very clear and elevated way.

Yes, he’s so clearheaded about it. He’s so gentle and kind. So incredibly intelligent. You talk about understanding the history, well that’s my dude. I told him, “I will be here for you wherever, whenever.”

I’m so honored to be a part of all those things. Man, those Unbroken Chains, talk about pinching yourself, what an honor! So heavy and so fun. Grahame will send me stuff and I know I’m going to be learning a new song. I’ve played a bunch of different side things now, including JRAD and others that have come up. But Grahame’s always got a new song for me and that’s the religion. We should be learning something new. That’s what we should be doing to the end.

In this spirit, can you talk a bit about how Jazz Fest unfolded for you?

My first gig was Adam Deitch’s birthday at Broadside with Ivan Neville and Nigel Hall. What an honor. I met Deitch when he was a teenager and I’m now playing his 50th birthday.

I actually had to let go of a couple gigs because I was at the final Gathering of Nations, that huge powwow in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was the last one. They did it for 43 years. I was honored to play it and be a part of what they called The Last Dance. That was so heavy and it was on Saturday.

I got up early Sunday morning and flew to New Orleans, praying the airlines were going to work right, and did Adam Deitch’s gig. Then I played with Nicholas Payton the next night. Grahame Lesh at the Joy Theater came after that. I also played Weedie’s birthday, as well as Deitch’s. Again, what an honor it was to be called to do both of those. Then it was the Meters and The Heavyweights—oh my God! The late night Col. Bruce tribute with Kevin Scott and Duane Trucks and all those cast of characters like Rick Lollar was also so much fun and such a great hang. 

Is there a particular moment that comes to mind as you think back on the night at the Saenger with The Meters?

The whole damn thing. I just pinched myself. I remember when I was younger I thought I would never get to see the original band because Art was very sick. Then one year I was there and they played twice and they put me on the guest list for both shows. I was standing on stage watching soundcheck right by the curtain and that was my standing on stage with Jerry moment.

Those are the guys for me. I told myself, “You got to see it, Oteil! All of them are right there, the original band!” Then I looked behind me and there’s Herlin Riley. Herlin’s played with everybody, he’s the baddest guy on earth and we’re both just looking at Zig shaking our heads. I’m like, “I could die now.” So to be called on stage with them is such an honor.

All the people who were there were our friends and family. Derek and Susan and Warren showed up. I was there with Ivan and Nicholas Payton, and The Heavyweights opened up. It was great, man.

There were a lot of pinch myself moments. A lot of my life is like that now. A lot of our lives are like that anyway and we don’t realize it. That’s what Bruce showed me. That’s what Abraham Joshua Heschel was talking about, the wonder that you’re missing. You could sit right under a tree or just look up.

You also played a gig as the fourth member of the Heavyweights [with Cory Henry, Eric Krasno, Robert Searight]. I recently spoke with Aron Magner, who said that he considers Cory to be the Michael Jordan of his instrument right now.

I can understand that because I believe in the mystical, but this is also true in nature. Every generation is provided with its own Art Tatum. After Art, you had Oscar Peterson and you can trace it down from there. I know that Eric Lewis is one of those people today and so is Cory Henry. They’re the Jedi masters who can just do the impossible. This is why we were all following Sun Ra. He said, “I’m talking about the impossible. Look at the sun. How is that possible?”

I’ve seen Eric Lewis do things. Just follow him on Instagram and you will see the impossible. It’s like his brain is split into four. It’s unbelievable. You’re looking at the impossible, especially when Eric and Cory get in the zone.

But I see it in terms of what we were talking about before with history. Imagine being in that age where they were saying, “Black people are only three fifths of a person” and then Art Tatum is walking around? All the classical musicians were like, “Have you seen this guy?” They knew. The artists knew. They were like, “Yeah, that racism thing is full of shit. Have you seen this dude play? Have you seen Wes Montgomery?”

Cory Henry is that for sure, and the fact that I got to share the stage with him is like getting to play with Art Tatum. And man, if I get to play with Eric Lewis, that will be something!

When you’re on that level of Cory Henry and Eric Lewis, that’s the highest level. Here’s what makes them the best—I still can smell it, I can taste it, it bleeds. It’s not just chops, man. That’s what Col. Bruce was talking about. I want it to bleed, too.

I get the way that people idolize Jerry but I would have loved to have seen Charlie Christian.

Jaimoe told me a story the other day that blew my mind. We were talking about our kids and life in general just like any other time, then all of a sudden he tells me this story that involved Papa Jo Jones, who played with Charlie Christian.

Jaimoe and Butch Trucks drove to New York to take a lesson with Elvin Jones at Al’s Drum Shop. I was like, “Wait a minute. Elvin Jones was teaching at a drum shop?” Then Jaimoe goes, “All the baddest dudes were teaching there. Tony Williams was teaching there. Papa Jo Jones was there.” I was like, “What?” He said, “It was $40.”

So they go up there and when Elvin sees them he says, “What are y’all doing here? I know who y’all are.” They’re like, “What?” He goes, “Y’all in Allman Brothers. What are y’all doing here?” He knew who they were. [Laughs.]

Papa Jo was also there but he didn’t give lessons anymore. Then a guy that worked there said to him, “Hey, man, you see that guy over there, you should hear him play hi-hat.” So Papa Jo walks up to Jaimoe and goes, “Oh, he says you’re really good on the hi-hat.” Jaimoe says to the first guy, “Damn, why did you throw me under the bus?” Then Papa Jo says, “Show me what you got.”

Jaimoe told me, “I couldn’t turn him down.” He said he was playing the hi-hat and Papa Jo told him, “You’re really good. How’d you learn to play all that? ” And Jaimoe said, “Man, I learned it off of records, just listening to records and trying to copy it.” Then he told me that Papa Jo decided to give him a lesson. My mind was blown, because Papa Jo played with Charlie Christian and that’s like Art Tatum. I mean, it’s so beautiful.

Sometimes I felt like I’d missed it all because Col. Bruce had seen everything. He was like Butch and Jaimoe. They’d get in the car and drive all the way to New York from Atlanta to see Trane and Miles. They just wanted to see the cats.

But I don’t lament what I missed. I keep my eyes open for what’s happening right now. There’s profound stuff going on at all times. Eric Lewis. Cory Henry.  All the sacred steel music. Go see these Indian masters. There’s so much music from all over the world. I’m about to dive into the oud, which is also related to the banjo to me. I’ll sit and play the oud at home and the whole house gets quiet. Everybody loves it when I play that thing. It’s got magic power.

When you mention Indian masters, I think of Shakti which I enjoyed on a visceral level even though there were some reference points that certainly eluded me.

No, that’s fine. You know when you’re seeing the impossible. Everybody in India is not trained in all that stuff, but they still bow down. They know nobody else can do that but them.

It’s funny because if you ask Derek or Steve Kimock who’s the baddest slide guitar player alive, they’ll say Debashish Bhattacharya. Debashish came to Steve Kimock’s barn and spent four or five days there. There have been only a couple of times I’ve seen Steve giddy with a smile so big that I could see him at nine years old. Well that was one of the times, when he told me, “Debashish is coming to stay at my house.” That guy is doing the impossible. He’s like Art Tatum.

When I think of musicians with exhilarating spirit and energy, Sam Bush is on my short list. He’s going to join Toy Factory Project for a few dates. What do you anticipate that he’ll bring to bear?

After a 13 year-waiting period Toy Factory finally came together and it’s been great. We thought it would be like that, but you don’t know until you do it. Then when we played at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, how lucky were we that we happened to be able to have Béla and Sam Bush sit in, just to throw those cherries on top. It was too good to be true.

Then Sam Bush’s name got thrown around for these next shows, and it’s going to be so great with his energy. He’s another one of those people.

Sam and Col. Bruce used to really go at it because they both are insanely knowledgeable about baseball trivia and apparently they really impressed each other. I know for sure that Bruce really impressed Sam. I plan to talk to him and get all my Col. Bruce stories when we’re together. I can’t wait for that to happen. He’s just a force of nature.

Matt Mundy and Reverend Mosier were the ones who turned me on to New Grass Revival. That’s when I first heard Béla and Sam and Pat Flynn and John Cowan. John and I share a birthday—we were both born on August 24^th. So those are dear old friends with lots of beautiful connections.

It’s just going to be so much fun with Sam. He’ll be on fiddle most of the time because Charlie Daniels did all their fiddle parts back in the day. I imagine he’ll play mandolin on something, though. I’m sure he knows all that stuff in his sleep. The energy coming off that stage was already high, but with Sam, it’s going to be ridiculous, man.

Life is good. I don’t care how dark and weird it gets. There’s still such beautiful stuff going on. I feel very lucky to be alive.