Phish isn’t the only thing going down in Atlantic City this weekend; catch the un-genre-fiable Lotus at the Bourbon Room (located in the Showboat Hotel & Casino on the Atlantic City Boardwalk) for the after party! Last week bassist Jesse Miller spoke with me about how Lotus has evolved over the years, overcoming the challenges of being creative, baking bread, and more.
Andrew Howie: So you’re back on the road now. Is this the first time you’ve been able to tour in a major way since the pandemic?
Jesse Miller: It kind of started up again, as everyone knows, in spurts and spats. The end of last summer we were able to do a few festivals, and like everyone else, we dealt with some cancellations and some new lockdowns popping up; but this summer we have festivals almost every weekend for the next two months. We’re definitely back into some kind of swing.
It’s always good to play like this; I’ve done some shows with my other groups, but festivals are where we really first built up our name, and it’s really great to come back to that energy.
AH: Did you find any priorities were realigned during the meat and potatoes of things, if you will?
JM: Nothing extreme for me, but things like this: I’ve always liked cooking and baking, but when you’re out on the road, you don’t have access to a kitchen. It definitely drove me crazy being stuck at home for as long as I was, but one upside was I got to cook for myself every day, and really ramp up that side of an interest. It didn’t make me want to change careers; I made four or five albums over that year and a half of lockdown, so it shifted priorities for me that already existed. The same kind of things I was interested in were realigned a little bit.
AH: Can you tell me anything about any of those lockdown albums?
JM: One project that I did was called BeesWax, and it’s a collaboration between me and a Philadelphia electronic group called Wax Future (hence the Beeswax title for the project). It’s pretty different from what they would do on their own. It’s more indie-leaning and band-oriented, so that was really fun. I also did a project with a friend of mine that I played in some high school bands with, and we did this ambient record that’s designed for this bed that sort of has conducer speakers built into it, so you can listen to it at any time. It’s really good on headphones, but if you have one of these beds, it’s really mixed for that as well. It’s a super relaxing, great ambient album called Vermont Stereo. There were also a lot of Lotus live records, a bunch of video stuff, those kinds of things as well.
AH: Quite a bit of work there! You stayed busy for sure.
JM: That’s the only way I know how to live. I just want to make something every day, be it a loaf of bread or a track for an album, there’s got to be some kind of creative act.
AH: What can you tell me about the addition of Tim Palmieri to the group?
JM: It’s a little bit of adjustment from each direction. This upcoming record, Bloom and Recede, was written before Tim was with us. He plays on it, but we were not specifically writing it with him in mind. But yeah, it’s definitely been a little bit of an adjustment on both sides. Tim comes from a little bit more of a rock side, and we’re from a little more of the dance side as far as our histories go, but there is plenty of crossover. So we’re trying to find things that showcase what he can do, and at the same time challenging him to do new things.
AH: You bring up challenging Tim to do new things; while prepping for this, I found an old quote of yours that mentioned how in the early days, it took a while for Lotus to find your sound. What can you tell me about the challenges organizing a musical group with a cohesive direction and mission and just going for it?
JM: I think it’s easy for me. Getting everybody in the band on board is not always the easiest thing though. It’s not like everything goes off flawlessly right away. You definitely need to spend some time and develop some things. One example of that approach recently is that over the last year and a half or so I’ve been incorporating modular synth more on stage; finding the best ways to do that has been a challenge, but also I think it’s really opened a lot of new sonic areas for us to explore, both live and in the studio. I don’t think anyone wants to stick to the same thing over and over again, unless you’re like AC/DC or something. We always want to be out there pushing ourselves to do something different, whether that’s in how we’re performing or a style of improvisation or how we approach songwriting, recording, or anything else.
AH: What appealed to you about the modular synth?
JM: One, you can’t save settings, so it’s very much on-the-fly, live or in the studio, it’s real time, which is exciting to me. Two, it’s such a huge sound. You can go from the lowest notes that go out of audio range to the same on the other end with the high notes. It’s such a huge scale, and you can do things that are different than what you can do with a guitar.
AH: Let’s talk a little bit more about the challenges and evolution of Lotus over the years. Do you notice anything different in the way you operate these days vs. when you were starting out?
JM: Definitely; in terms of writing, earlier on we were more apt to just get an idea and try to work it out with the band in rehearsals, and it actually took members of the band moving to different cities where we didn’t have as much rehearsal time to realize that that process was not very efficient. At least for us, it’s much more streamlined to work through the writing in detail before it comes to the band, because trying to write something with more than two people at once is really challenging. Every part affects every other part, so when someone says, ‘oh this needs to be like this,’ almost everything else needs to change.
Expanding on that, me and Luke [Miller, guitar] just got into this process where we do this extensive back and forth on any demo, working it for months to sometimes over a year before it even gets to the band, so at that point we’ve worked out most of the big things, and anything small can be adjusted without throwing off the overall composition.
AH: What can you tell me about composing instrumental music as opposed to songs with vocals?
JM: With lyrics, usually something is changing constantly and that’s the focus, so a lot of times the backing music doesn’t change. With instrumental music, I think repetition is good and makes hooks, but if you’re doing the exact same thing over and over, that’s no good. So we are looking for ways to keep those traditional structures of chorus/verse/bridge/what have you, but find ways to evolve them slightly or do something different that will keep it interesting, while still drawing on that repetition where it becomes something familiar. Ultimately we want Lotus hooks to be the kind of music where once you’ve heard it you’re singing it all day, the ear worm kind of approach.
AH: You mentioned earlier how festivals are where you first cut your teeth. You’ve been playing them for quite some time now. What do you think keeps fans coming back to these types of events for so many years?
JM: I think at the end of the day, it’s the other people who are attending these shows. There is something to be said about the improvisation, the changing setlists and all that, but at the end, it’s really just something for people at the shows. Take all that same music and take away the fans and you don’t get that same kind of community of people trying to go back again and again.
AH: Speaking of the fans, anything you’d like to say to them before we sign off?
JM: Just that Lotus has a new record coming out at the end of August, called Bloom and Recede. A couple singles are out already, and videos for those. I am super excited about this record, I really, really love how it came out. Can’t wait to get it fully out in the world. Also excited to get back to Chicago for Sacred Rose, looks like a fantastic festival.
