Was Neil Young always an artist that you wanted to cover? What made you start the band?

I’ve been a fan of Neil’s for a long time, certainly – since I saw The Last Waltz when it came out. I was in bands at the time, in high school and after that. We played Neil tunes, but we also did a lot of other songs as well. We actually kind of looked down at the tribute band genre at the time.

And when was that?

Late 70s, early 80s.

Were there a lot of tribute bands around at that time?

Not a lot – there was the Rolling Stones tribute band, Sticky Fingers. And Beatlemania had become really popular at the time. There were some other ones, but they were all the bigger bands, like the Who. It definitely wasn’t considered a cool thing to do, and at that age, we were probably overly concerned with being cool [laughs]. Then over the years, people would say, “You gotta’ do a Neil tribute band.” I really never considered it seriously, at all. I quit playing music for 9 or 10 years, then a good friend of mine was in a Dave Matthews tribute band in upstate New York, and he opened my eyes to the whole concept of it.

Once you were ready to move forward, how did you recruit the band that you have now?

That was tough. I think I probably took close to a year in thinking about it, and kind of looking around. I pretty much searched everywhere – music stores, bulletin boards, and a lot on the Internet. When I finally actively started to do it, I realized I actually needed a real person to get started. So I started calling old music friends that I’d played with over the years, and most guys weren’t that interested in doing it. Our first drummer was a guy that I played music with in high school, and I asked him to help me audition bass players. He finally agreed to do that…not to be in the band, but just to help audition guys. We got a couple of guys that wanted to come down, and the second or third guy was the bass player that we’ve got today. And then the drummer decided to stay on because it sounded so great. And then we hooked up with another guitar player that I and the drummer had been in a band with. So I was getting some advice on PA systems from him, and when I mentioned it, I was certain he wasn’t interested, so I didn’t even ask him to be in the band. But in the process of talking to him, he got pretty excited about it, so then we had a band.

Tell me a little about the other members in the band. What unique traits do you think they bring to the mix?

Well, I think one of the cool things about what we’re doing is that we’re not necessarily trying to copy the records at all. Certainly some of the tunes that people hear are going to feel right on the money, and some of them are, but a lot of the stuff we do isn’t, and I think that’s Chuck Nemitz’s (guitarist) strength. He’s a real improvisational type player. And he loves to sing unusual harmony parts. So if we can venture off the main road, he’ll do it pretty much any chance he gets. And that whole aspect keeps the band pretty fresh. To some extent, it’s a new experience every time we play. We’ll do different versions of a song – almost any song we’ve done, we can do acoustic or electric, and we do that. We have a slow version, and a fast version, so when I’m putting together a set list, I’m thinking about where my head’s at, what mood I’m in, what the band’s been doing lately, and it’s really geared towards that. So it’s a very real music experience in that respect.

Mike Garron, our bass player, is a real solid guy. This might sound kind of funny, but one of the things he brings to the band is…well, that everyone brings to the band – we’re not the traditional flaky, troubled bandmates that everyone who’s been in a band has experienced. We all know who we are, we’ve all got families and day jobs, but we’re still committed to doing this project. So that’s definitely allowed us to do it for the past five years. I wouldn’t venture to say how long we’re going to continue doing it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we continue doing it for a long time.

The band’s been around for five years?

Yeah, our first gig was in November of ’02, and we played in November of ’07, and that was our five-year celebration concert. At that time, I really didn’t know if we were going to continue, so we took a little break, and then we decided to keep going.

So your Bull Run show is the first one you’ve played since last November?

Yes.

Sorry…you were discussing the band. I don’t think we made it to the drummer.

Yeah, actually we have a new drummer with us. The guy on our web site, Scott, is no longer with us, so we have this new guy Jeremy Esposito. I have to say, that’s one of the things that’s bringing some really new energy to the band right now. Jeremy was a guy who was in a band with Chuck many years ago, and when he sat in with us a few years back, we really loved playing together. Scott is a pretty good singer, actually, so he’s trying to put something together and he wants to put all his energy into that.

Will this be Jeremy’s first live gig with you?

Well, he sat in with us a few years back. We also have a pedal steel player, Rob Hamilton, who’s been with us I think two years. And that’s just phenomenal. There’s just so much pedal steel in Neil’s music. To be honest with you, that was my original dream band, I think. It had a pedal steel player in it, and there just aren’t many guys around who play it…especially here. So I never really thought it could happen, until I had a chance meeting with Rob, and he’s a great player. And he adds a lot.

Does he sit in regularly?

He’s a regular member of the band.

You’ve got six guys, then?

We’ve got six guys, and we’ve got a female vocalist who’s been sitting in with us, Reena Valley, and she’s become an official member of the band recently.

Will all of you be playing the Bull Run show?

Yes, we will.

Switching gears a bit, tell me how you approach the wide variety of styles and genres that are inherent in Neil’s catalog. Do you divide the shows into sections, or do you change from song to song?

I don’t think we have a real set pattern. In certain rooms we play – restaurants, particularly – we tend to start off with the quieter material, mainly because people are eating dinner, and we don’t want to dislodge a piece of steak from someone’s throat with some bombastic feedback [laughs]. And a lot of the places we’ve played have had a restaurant component. That can certainly change from show to show, and as far as the genres are concerned, we’ve tried a few different things over time. Everyone pretty much lets me take care of the setlist, other than wanting to work in certain songs here and there. Since I’m singing lead on almost all the songs, I feel like I have to be behind it to pull it off. I don’t consider myself a great or well-trained singer, but this music is very passion driven for me. I’ve had the experience in the past a few times when I wasn’t passionate about something, and it was horrible. So I learned from that mistake. If it’s not happening for me, then we just aren’t going to do the song, because there are always plenty of songs that I AM passionate about.

From what I’ve heard on your web site, you guys pull off a pretty authentic representation of Neil’s sound. What sort of your own personality do you try to inject into the music?

That’s a tough question to answer, but I kind of think that anybody who’s more than a casual fan of Neil’s music is that way because they’re connecting with something in the music that would be hard to pinpoint or put a word to. With his earlier music, there’s this spaciousness, and almost a sadness, and loneliness to it, but there’s still someone in there banging away at it. The cool thing, though, is that with Neil’s career, pretty much everything he’s experienced in his life has been written down or recorded into music, like any excellent artist. There’s a lot of his music that’s totally different from his earlier stuff, but his humanity is in the music. I think that even for people who aren’t diehard fans, he’s so respected because it’s widely recognized that his music is very truthful. But as far as my own connection to the music, the guys in the band have told me this many, many times: “You have to stop thinking and just let it happen.”

I had this funny experience – Mike went to see Neil when he was playing with CSNY a year or so ago. He took his wife, and they were down at the show at the Tweeter Center, and she had never seen Neil. So Neil comes out, and after two or three songs, Mike said she turned to him with her jaw down and said, “Oh my God – Neil moves just like Ken onstage.” Then another guy that I know was at the exact same show, and he brought his 14 year-old son, and after two or three songs, the kid turns to his father and says, “Oh my God! Ken moves just like Neil.”

I definitely hear that a lot, and it’s something I’ve never thought about. But I think it’s due to some kind of osmosis. I can tell you that after The Last Waltz, I was really drawn right in. And then when Rust Never Sleeps came out, I was in college at Iowa State, and I probably drove from Ames Iowa to Des Moines seven or eight times, and just sat in the theater. I wasn’t studying the movie like you consciously study one, but I was transfixed by it. I think that’s where a lot of that came from. I just got so into it that it was just there.

What kind of fans come to your shows? Is it an older crowd, a younger crowd, or a combination?

It’s definitely a combination. We actually get hired quite a bit to do private parties. I’ve lost count of how many 50th birthday parties we’ve done, so if that tells you something about the demographic. But it’s a pretty wide group of people, and I think I could draw a line down the center of the casual fan and the hardcore fan, and they both come. But there’s a difference. At the end of the day, the casual fan probably wants to hear more of the well-known stuff plus the quieter, sweeter stuff. And the hardcore fan wants to feel the pain. Of course, a lot of those guys want to impress us with their knowledge [laughs], and they’ll call out the most obscure song they can think of. They’re trying to stump us, which is easy to do, actually, because…I just downloaded a PDF of a Neil Young songbook that a guy just put together, and it’s got every song Neil has ever written in it, There are 674 songs in the book.

That’s a pretty exhaustive catalog. So how deep do you guys go into the catalog? Do you do some obscure stuff?

I think we do. I mean, the hardcore guys probably wouldn’t think we do, but they’ll always feel that way. Actually, that’s been one of the cool things for us – we’ve brought some songs to the table that casual people will come up and tell us they really like a song, and ask about it. We do stuff like “Broken Arrow,” “Scattered,” “Big Time” – from Mirrorball we’ll do “Song X” that he did with Pearl Jam. There’s some stuff that we definitely haven’t gotten to yet that we’re planning to, but that’s another joy of this project for me. I feel like if we continue to do this for another 10 or 12 or 15 years, I’ll probably still feel exactly the same way, like, “Wow, we haven’t gotten to that one yet.” So there’s always something to be excited about. I would have no interest in being in any other tribute band. Could you imagine if someone only had three or four albums tops, and that’s all you have to work with? I’d go out of my mind. There are songs that we do that I don’t like to do anymore, so we just have to set them aside.

Does Neil Young himself know about Rust Never Sleeps? Has he given you the thumbs up?

Well, when we did our first gig – I don’t remember what we made…probably $250 or $300 – we decided that it would be good karma for the band to send the money in as a donation to The Bridge School, the foundation for autistic kids that he and his wife Pegi started. We sent in the donation, and we got a letter back from Pegi. It was a typewritten letter from the director thanking us, and there was a handwritten note at the bottom from Pegi saying thanks.

So what’s your favorite Neil Young song to play?

[laughs] That’s a tough question, and definitely changes all the time. Currently I like “When You Dance” and “Big Time.” With the quiet tunes, I keep finding these little gems. We have fun with Reena adding a female, kind of Emmylou Harris vocal on them. I’m a fan of the Comes a Time album, and there’s a song called “Red Sun” from the Silver and Gold album.

What’s coming up after the show next weekend?

Well, we’re playing at a place called Amazing Things Art Center in Framingham, and we do coffee houses sometimes. Those gigs are fantastic for us, because it’s a totally different experience. You can hear a pin drop, because people are really listening. That’s always a lot of fun. This summer, we’re doing an outdoor concert series in Georgetown, and then we’ll be at the opening day of bike week in Laconia. And we’re booked to go back to BB King’s in November on Neil’s birthday. We’ve been there twice, so this will be our third time back at BB King’s.