As with all of their shows, Michael Travis begins by declaring “We are EOTO, everything 100% live and improvised, no backing tracks, nothing recorded/rehearsed, no nothing, we make it all up for you live on the spot.” Despite this disclaimer, it is still difficult for many in the audience to wrap their head around the full extent of what is happening up on stage during the show. Everyone in the room is about to experience a one-of-a-kind experimental, dubstep-infused jamtronica creation.

Jason Hann & Michael Travis, both percussionists in the legendary band the String Cheese Incident, decided to take their mutual interest of electronic music and pursue their own vision of what can be achieved when adding the power of computers to their skills as organic instrumentalists. They create everything on the go to produce a completely original and intricate jam session each time they take the stage. On top of building loops using the bass, guitar or many keyboards & synths at his disposal, Travis mixes in loops & riffs of sounds he creates digitally from scratch on the spot “the way a DJ would do, but faster.”

Hann, meanwhile, bangs away on his illuminating drum set throughout the whole night, while adding vocals and electronic percussion that are digitally manipulated through controls on an array of iPads. Between all of the tools they utilize during a performance, the duo can create endless possibilities and never have to play the same thing twice, so they don’t. Aside from the occasional deconstructed cover, mostly identifiable by Hann’s vocals, there is no set-list or discernable songs in their show. They are, in the truest sense, a live performance act.

EOTO is on the road again this spring, resurrecting their Outer Orbit tour from Fall 2014 and making stops on both the East and West coast, before slipping into some festival dates for the summer. They will continue to keep spreading their EOTO vision to the masses and hope people appreciate what they are doing, which they can tell you in their own words as Live for Live Music team Corey Regensburger and Marisa Frydman caught up with Michael Travis and Jason Hann before taking the stage at Toad’s Place in New Haven, the second stop on their tour, to talk music, collaborations, poodles, and stage setup: all things EOTO.

Jason Hann (top) and Michael Travis (bottom) of EOTO playing the Theatre of Living Arts in Philadelphia (Photo Credit Bud Fulginiti)

[Written by Corey Regensburger & Marisa Frydman]

L4LM: So you guys are the drummer and percussionist for the String Cheese Incident (SCI). How did EOTO come to be? When did you realize that playing with each other in String Cheese that you had this sort of vibe that allowed you to do this improvisational thing on your own and do a more electronic focused project?

MT: We would just start jamming at my house. Jason would stay at my house when he would come out and practice with String Cheese and I have a studio at my house, kind of a studio where he would sleep. We would just jam on drum kit and I would play 7 string bass, or 8 string bass because I had been working a lot on it at that point with string cheese, and we got some fun grooves down and loops and then he [Jason] suggested using Ableton Live as a further looping tool, and then we decided well maybe this should be more electronic. We started adding keyboards and studying those modalities more. It was very organic, smooth.

L4LM: It would seem that your instrumental set-up to do what you do with the live improv is very particular to each of you as artists, is it not?

MT: Yeah, you know there’s a traditional standard band setup where any musicians can step up and play if they know how to play the instruments, but ours is extremely specific. Other band’s members couldn’t walk up and run our spaceship, it’s intrinsically built around our vision over the years and modified in our quirky way that’s become very non-repeatable, or non-useful in any way to anyone else really.

L4LM: Jason, you use a touchscreen iPad, and at some shows it looks like the iPad is actually tilted away from you and you couldn’t see it but were reaching around it to play. How is it using the iPad? Is it second nature to you or do you ever miss your target and touch the wrong parts of the screen because you can’t feel it?

JH: I definitely miss knobs and buttons and stuff, but I think that the thing that wins over (the iPad) for me is that I’ve probably have over 100 sort of various things assigned, and the ability to arrange it in a certain way and compartmentalize it in a certain way, and make some things easier to have access to in one tight spot, that won out over having a bunch of knobs that might take up more space for me. So having it all in this area where I’m playing drums at the same time and I can reach it works way better. At first, the plan was to have it face the crowd a little bit so people could actually see what I’m doing cause they’re so thin, but I could never really tilt it to where it’s useful for me and it can be seen, so, it just ended up in it’s current position.

Jason Hann’s iPad control center (Photo Credit Bud Fulginiti)

EOTO’s “Spaceship” from Hann’s Perspective (Photo Credit Bud Fulginiti)

L4LM: How do you decide what you are doing when you’re out there? Do you have any sort of things you guys rehearse beforehand?

MT: There’s nothing rehearsed beforehand. I tend to probably loop more than Jason, and Jason is doing a lot of singing and live drum playing and occasional looping of vocal parts and electronic percussion parts and his drum kit, but I’m doing most of the looping and most of the tonal stuff, bass, keyboard, guitar.

JH: Yeah, you hear all of the super stacks of guitar, bass, and keyboards, you can really fill out that sound to make it feel like a 10-piece band. It’s nice because it sounds like a bigger music production than can obviously be done by two people

L4LM: Is it hard to keep track of all of the things you’re doing at once?

MT: Oh yeah, since I’ve stopped smoking weed before shows that’s definitely helped. It’s just a strange little memory bank I’ve built where I can memorize where parts of songs are built and I can forget them right when I erase them and just move on to the next part. But it is a lot to manage.

L4LM: Do you guys even talk about anything that you want to try out there beforehand? Or do you just go?

MT: We haven’t said a word about EOTO in 3 months and we just stepped on stage last night (in Boston).

Jason Hann Working his Illuminated Drum Set, iPads & Vocal Cords all at Once (Photo Corey Regensburger)

JH: Yeah, we actually talked about how we hadn’t touched our equipment. I asked [Travis] if he’s played with his stuff since then and he said no, and I had all my stuff taken apart and I haven’t messed around with it.

MT: So we set it up and it all worked.

JH: And it all worked and we played a killer show! Which never happens, there’s always something we’re troubleshooting.

MT: We don’t talk about anything before we step on stage, not even tempo anymore.

L4LM: I can imagine for you guys every time you play a show it’s a new experience. Many other artists have a show that’s rehearsed and they might get tired of it. Every time you step on stage, you get to experiment and try new things.

MT: That’s definitely a big reason why it’s easy to play 200+ shows a year like we used to play. One tour was 33 [shows] in a row without a day off.

JH: And then 96 shows in 103 days.

MT: But it is all improv, we don’t have to memorize stuff so that we’re not getting bored or the tedium of rehearsing. Instead we’re just like ‘wheeeeeee!!!’

L4LM: Well talk to us a little bit about this tour. Is there anything about this spring time tour that’s different? I know you guys did an Outer Orbits tour in the fall, is it just picking up where you left off here? Anything particular about this tour, like your openers ill.gates or ELM?

MT: It’s exciting, [ill.gates] has made a lot of progress and moves in rethinking Ableton and exciting tech moves, so it’s fun to have him along, and he’s been a friend for a long time.

JH: And ELM, I think we have the ELM guys this week and next week from Baltimore, and we’ve known them maybe as long as we’ve been a band. Every time we go through Baltimore it seems like some form of ELM or the guys that were in ELM were hanging, we were either playing at their place or they were opening up for us, so you know, good group of dudes that goes back with us.

ill.gates gets the crowd pumped up (photo Corey Regensburger)

L4LM: Are there any future plans for EOTO? Are you guys just jamming away and trying to have fun while you’re at it, or are you trying to take this project to new heights in any way?

MT: We talked about maybe doing a tour with sit-ins at every stop, just an EOTO and Friends kind of tour, see what that was like.

L4LM: I know you guys have had some sit-ins with other musicians. Are there any musicians out there right now that you would really like to have a sit in with, and when you do have sit ins with other musicians, does it change the dynamic of EOTO?

MT: Yeh, it just changes how we think about it. I just don’t think about my parts at all the same you know, try to adapt to whatever the person is bringing, and whatever they are doing, I have to take out that part of what I would be doing. Like if it’s a keyboard player that’s known for his solos then you know, sometimes I just retract it, like playing bass or whatever it is. Or Jason maybe backs off the cover songs if its more of a sacred mood or more of a jam mood or whatever, so that the other people, whoever it is, so that their contribution is fully blossomed and we’re not trampling over them.

L4LM: So you guys are confident enough that you let them take the lead and you compliment them on what they are doing.

MT: Defintely, but yet knowing when to say ‘ok, here we go’ corralling the pacing of the whole thing, keeping it moving, because I think a lot of people get lost in our versatility and they’re just like ‘oh, wow I can go anywhere, I’ll just wander around over here’ and so we have to play the sheep dog sometimes and be like ‘alright, that’s fun, but your done grazing in this playground, we’re gonna go to different pastures, through the gate, here we go.’ [*Laughs*]

JH: And that’s part of it too, to have them in our world, cause sometimes if we did that sort of exploratory zone, if we do some build up to something else or we do something on the fly, it’s fun to see the expression on whoever is sitting in with us when they experience that, and they’re like ‘what just happened?’ when the crowd goes nuts.

L4LM: So is there anyone out there right now that you really like and would want to sit in with you?

MT: We’ve talked to Jake Cinninger from Umphrey’s [McGee], we’ve kind of honed in on him, thought that would be really fun because he’s really good at shape-shifting and understands electronic idioms really well I think, and he would dig it a lot, and so that’s definitely a goal. We had most all of Umphrey’s sit in once at the Boon Saloon in Boon, North Carolina in 2007 or something.

JH: That’s right we had 4 of the 6. Yea that was amazing, we were just both doing a show in town, they were finished pretty early so I think 5 of them came over. We just all switched off. Great times, that was super memorable, that definitely stands out. We also had great success doing this show with Jamie Shields from the New Deal.

MT: It was Michael Kang and Jamie Shields, and Jason and I. It was pretty cool, we were called the New Elastic Time, doing different versions of the songs off their projects.

JH: Yea we had such a killer response on that.

L4LM: If you could work with anybody though, like big stars, pop stars ideally, are there any pop stars that you actually admire? Because I know that you guys are very counterculture.

MT: I’m in love with this new Taylor Swift song, I am! I think this song “Style,” I think that it’s a badass fucking song. (Laughs) Not a pop star, but I know that at least 4 out of the 6 of us (in SCI) would be in awe to play with Pat Metheny that’s a huge goal of all of ours I think. Very famous jazz guitar player, did a lot to take the walls of jazz down and create this music that was just like mind blowing cinematic new age tear jerker jazz something something… He’s a huge influence on me and (Michael) Kang, as well as Jason, and that would be huge. And we have inroads to maybe make that happen so that would be wonderful.

L4LM: That would be amazing, I’m sure you guys could get anybody you really wanted, in terms of organic musicians at least.

MT: In the jam world, well we’ve played with all the Grateful Dead folks over the years.

L4LM: Bill Kreutzmann sat in with you guys as EOTO right?

JH: At Electric Forest! That was classic! Well we hung out with Billy at Hawaii at his place, and it was such a great hang. He was such a genuine super, amazing person like that, and that one year at EF he was going for it, everyone was at our stage and I don’t even know how it went down. He just had his pilot’s hat on and came out there, I forget, but it was pretty trippy to see him out there.

(Corey Regensburger)

L4LM: So in regards to Electric Forest, you two guys play 7 sets (6 with SCI, 1 with EOTO), you play all four nights. Is that a sort-of homecoming for you? That’s viewed as String Cheese’s festival in that sense (that you’re the main act), and its popularity has grown immensely. It’s regarded as one of the biggest and best festivals right now. What does that mean to you?

MT: It is, yeah you know it is – it is special because it’s a fruition of an amalgamation of all our experiences. Though it did get a little rave-y for some of the band members because it teamed up with Insomniac, so it kind of takes that tinge. But as far as an immersive show environment, we went to Oregon Country Fair, which is a mind blowing event, the beating heart of the vestigial hippie dream, and then went to Burning Man, and then did our own thing at Horning’s Hideout. So it’s this kind of amalgamation of our imprint of the counter culture, combined with Burning Man sensibilities, combined with OR Country Fair, grabbing all the people we’ve met and learned from and known along the way and creating this big mega team.

Some of them work on Burning Man and some work on OR country fair, some of them worked at Horning’s Hideout, a kind of smaller amalgamation of those elements and then we put it together in a big ass form in the forest. And the forest, we learned a lot from Fuji Rock Festival, they had some really fun tricks, and we just learned all these things along the way, you know going to these places and thinking ‘wow that’s great, let’s do that’ and then put those experiences all in one big pile. So it is kind of the outpouring of the intellectual brain and heart child of all of our visions and all of our learnings over the years all put into one spot, trying to make it as immersive as possible.

L4LM: Do you guys get to input into EF?

MT: We do somewhat, not that much. We are a hired band, although we started the vision together. Jeremy Stein of Madison House is the functioning owner of the fest, and he’s been there with us since the start of the fest, he’s been there since 97’, 98’, he’s been there learning along with us. He’s been our family, the Madison House/String Cheese family cruising along the adventures over the years, although he’s never been to Burning Man and we took some of that home. But (Michael) Kang, he got really into Burning Man and since the first Electric Forest/Rothbury, he’s been a big part of gathering a lot of his friends. I started going to Burning Man in 2001 and convinced him to go in 2002 and he took to it really heavily, a lot more than I had. I would just sort of go and end up hanging out, but he would start building all these art cars and engaging in these super hero builder types, and got them all to be a part of Electric Forest.

L4LM: I know the Forest itself is composed of a lot of stuff from Burning Man…

MT: Yea and I know a lot of those people that are in there doing those things from Burning Man and just this family that keeps growing and modulating and expanding. And now the Electric Forest team is taking on its own identity and people are really excited to have made their imprint there. Where at Burning Man, maybe you make an art piece at but you are just drowned out by so much. Anything you build on an Electric Forest scale is going to be drowned out and lost at Burning Man, most people won’t even see it. When you go to Electric Forest it all takes on, you can really dig in, these artists are really a very verified and pulsing expression.

(Bud Fulginiti)

L4LM: When I saw you a few years ago at Electric Forest, you were really innovative with the lotus flower. It was such a standout stage set up, and you’re still utilizing some of that projection mapping with the new prism stage set up. Since you came out with that, the technology has grown so much that everyone has crazy light shows and visuals now. What do you think about that, and what is the next step? What do you need to do need to do to stay ahead?

MT: It felt like by the time we had made the lotus live shows, DJ/electronic shows having monstrous visual array was already well established. The 3D mapping thing was somewhat fresh, we were definitely one of the first few acts to really push that, you know Amon Tobin kind of opened everyone’s eyes to that new thing and we were like ‘wow we can do that too’. I think that the new frontier might not be our new frontier, because the new frontier, I feel fine saying that I think DJs are kind of virtually trying to obfuscate the fact that they’re doing very little up on stage by having so much visual stuff like ‘look at this, look at the pretty lights!’ It doesn’t really matter that we’re not doing anything up here except having the playlist go. Since we’re really creating tracks maybe just 2 giant ass spotlights over us is our future. Where we’re really showing what we’re doing, and you guys, people, can go to a DJ show or you can watch two dudes really fucking making music on stage.

L4LM: So are visuals important to you, because obviously they were a big part of the show with the lotus, but you guys do enough already to have an awesome show without it.

MT: Well so that’s the thing, we felt like we got lost behind the lotus, like we’re the lotus’s backing band after awhile, and it was kind of frustrating and definitely lost some personal heart momentum because of that. We call it the bathtub and sometimes the risers wouldn’t be the right height and the front pedals were so tall I could barely see the audience, like I couldn’t see the first 2 rows. It was kind of cool and an amazingly fresh take, and on it’s best nights it was very cool, but it was kind of too much for us I think, because we need to be the middle of our own show. And here’s an important point that I like to press; is that I don’t think, as it is, a lot of people fully understand how live or how real our show is and that we’re playing every single note, making it up, playing it and recording it on the spot, and then erasing it and making up new stuff. So to have anything that’s making it even harder for people to figure that out is probably not in our best interest in the end, even though it is pretty.

JH: And I think initially that there was a level of trying to provide a sensory experience, so that kids who want to see electronic music and don’t know what we’re doing, at least they’ll have a good time. But as we actually got it going it we didn’t want to reinforce them not knowing what we’re doing. There was this guy just last night that was like “where do you guys usually have your bass tracks at when your triggering.” He had been seeing us for 2 years, and it’s not a bad thing, he just didn’t know.

MT: We got too good at it.

JH: It was definitely a joy to explore projection mapping, what it was, what it could do, shape-shifting & being part of the shape shifting, it’s all pretty amazing. But all the things that Trav was talking about, how we wouldn’t have the perfect scenario every time we went into a club or the stage was too small. Plus, I remember we did some Arizona festival where we were going to play some after show but it was on an indoor stage, and they only had like 2 spotlights, not even spotlights

MT: A red and a blue light.

JH: Yea, and we went in there and it was such a high energy, it felt crazy. It was because you could look in people’s eye and they were practically on stage with us.

MT: It’s been better since we got rid of the lotus.

JH: Yea, you can feel that night after night, not having those giant things on stage.

L4LM: Do you guys have any other musical or personal ambitions, things that you want to try do, to venture into other forays?

MT: I have a poodle grooming service I’m going to start up. I’ve always had a passion for the poodles, a finely quaffed poodle. Who doesn’t love a finely quaffed poodle? (Laughs). No we have many irons and fires of musical adventures and so on. Jason is doing a big project that he pulled together, a kind of fusion world project with all kinds of cats (Rhythmatronix). It’s gonna be a wild soup of stuff, April 17th & 18th in Denver. And I’ve got an old project, my first side project as Zuvuya, we’re playing some shows again occasionally. It’s just a Pakistani nylon string guitar player (Xander Greene) and me. All kinds of stuff, Jason and I both have DJ things. (Hann’s DJ project is called Prophet Massive, and Travis’s other big project is Zilla.)

Michael Travis Playing while Showered in Projection Mapped Visuals (Corey Regensburger)

The unique combination of elements specific to EOTO distinguishes them as artists. There are others who utilize a similar multi-instrument looping approach, those who combine electronic sounds and live instrumentation, and even those who improvise on the fly during their shows, but no one else that does all of those things, let alone at the same time. Ultimately even the most impressive live-improv acts are still differentiated by the sheer fact that they still have a setlist at the end of most nights, and are reworking elements of something existing. No, there is no one else out there doing anything quite like EOTO, they are as original of an act as any in today’s scene.

When Hann and Travis put EOTO together, they have you under their spell, making you move fast or slow, zone out or get low, bringing you along as they navigate their spaceship into the Outer Orbit.

For EOTO Tour Dates, click here.

EOTO from Sonic Bloom in 2014: