photo by: Jim Trocchio

You’ve also been reflecting upon the 10-year anniversary of Cradlesong, you’re playing a bunch of songs from that record on this tour including the incredibly moving “Her Diamonds”. What does it feel like now playing that song each night?

Unfortunately, it is still sore. It’s still me working through it when I sing it every night. The same thing holds true for “Ever the Same” – they were both written when I started to realize my wife was sick. It hasn’t gotten that much better. Mari has been very open about it and it has caused a lot of other people to come out and start talking about what they’re going through. I can see people in the audience that are working their way through it as I’m singing it. There’s something really cathartic about that solidarity when you realize you are not alone. It’s easy to get myopic about things and think that you are experiencing something cold and unique to yourself. It makes you feel completely alone. Then you realize it’s a very broad emotion that other people are going through. People can relate to just getting through every day. So, that’s been very helpful to me.

2019 also marks the 20th anniversary of “Smooth”, your collaboration with Santana. When you think back to that now, what is something that you carry with you every night?

Carlos taught me – you can’t control the outcome of anything that happens, but you can control your motive, your intention and your purpose. If you control those three things in everything you put into, then it’s going to be honest. You also must have gratitude everywhere you go. The best thing that has come out of “Smooth” is that even today when we are both on the road, we get on the phone and text each other, “How was your show?”, “Good, how as your show?”, “I fuckin’ love you”, “I fuckin’ love you, too” I saw him in Phoenix a few weeks ago and I went up and played with him on a night off. We were talking about “Smooth” and saying how it’s not the best song I’ve ever written and it’s not the best song he’s ever done. It was this weird lighting in a bottle and we believe the reason it was put there was for him and I to meet and become friends. He’s literally like my brother, it’s an unbelievable friendship that we’ve built over the years. That’s the best thing that I take with me – not just me and him, but him and my family, there’s just a love there. One of the first things we’re thinking about doing when we get off the road is going out to his place in Hawaii and doing some writing. We’ve done a ton of stuff quietly since “Smooth”, like I wrote a bunch of songs for his Shaman record, we just never wanted to try and repeat “Smooth”. That was just a special moment, it was our moment, and it’s an amazing thing that it has stuck around the way that it has. It has its own life, where it is it’s own thing now.

Coming full circle here, all of this considered, what does this moment, the Chip Tooth Smile chapter in your journey mean to you?

It’s revealing itself every day. We spend so much time in our lives worrying about something that you can’t change or anticipating something that’s about to happen that you can’t change. We don’t spend enough time just in the moment. I know that today I’m in Boston, my son is going to come join me and jump on stage and play music, and I’m going to hang out with some friends. I’ll then go home tonight get into bed with my wife and have a day off tomorrow. I’m trying to not think about much more than that. Next summer we are thinking about going out with Matchbox Twenty, these kinds of things are in the works. But I may not get next summer. I know that I had last week, I know that I have today, and I hope I get next week, but I’m definitely not going to squander today worrying about it.