For five years, Vince Welnick toured the country with one of the most important/influential groups in music history, the Grateful Dead. Welnick will play keyboards for Jack Straw next Thursday night at Otto’s Niteclub, 118 E. Lincoln Highway. Welnick lent 45 minutes of his time to discuss topics from Jerry Garcia to the war on terror.

-W: How does it feel to go from playing with a band like the Grateful Dead, such a huge experience for people, to playing with a lesser known group like Jack Straw?

VW: Well, the music’s well-known, no matter where you go, they know the music. The advantage is that I can go out and hang out with the audience. I can do that without there being a mob scene. It’s a much more intimate gathering. Since there is no more Grateful Dead and there is no more Jerry Garcia to sing live, it’s most appropriate. There’s only so many bands doing that stuff. There was a time after Jerry died that I didn’t know if I would play again period, especially the music of the Grateful Dead. It’s an opportunity to get to the Chicago area because they’re [Jack Straw] established there and they make it ever so easy just by contacting me, getting me out there. All I have to do is get my own self out there and I can play the music of the Grateful Dead. They’ve learned some of my songs, stuff that I wrote and played with the Dead, and I’ll be doing some of their original music, too, so we have a good repertoire of songs.

W: So would you say that you’re more comfortable playing in a smaller venue than in front of 70,000 people in an arena?

VW: No, don’t get me wrong, I want to play in a huge arena; I want to see the sea of humanity. I wish that 100,000 people would come see Jack Straw play because that’s great. But the one specific advantage of this is that the people that are there I get to actually touch and feel and speak to in-person and hang out with and go to their houses. I get to meet people on a more down-to-Earth basis, more like as friends. It’s fun, I like playing smaller places for that reason, but show me a gig where there’s 100,000 people and I’ll play it. You feel a little more insignificant really. I mean, they’re all there to see you, but you’re just a speck.

W: What’s life been like for you after the Grateful Dead?

VW: It enriched my life. Right now I’m sitting in a bathtub on 10 acres out in the country, life is sweet. Jerry treated me very good. I’m thankful for that band for everything.

W: You joined them in 1990, right?

VW: Yeah.

W: What was the audition process like?

VW: They had Bruce Hornsby playing for them temporarily on piano. They were auditioning people who could play the synthesizer and do high harmonies. I got it based on both of those. They didn’t want to just have a piano player. In fact, Bruce couldn’t even do the harmony parts that they needed to have done so they got me and Bruce played on for a couple years then he took off to do his thing full-time.

W: How did it feel when you were told that you got the job?

VW: Oh, I was ecstatic. First thing they said was, “Is your insurance paid up?” Because three guys had died doing my job. Three tried and three died. It was the hot seat, the scariest place to be. To be the keyboardist in that band is like being the drummer in Spinal Tap.

W: What was the most important thing you learned from the whole experience with the Dead?

VW: Kindness. Serving the music, which means spending as much time listening as playing. And the free formness, the fact that yes, a band can be popular and not have to play three minute songs. And adhere to a specific arrangement or searching for notes, playing as many or as few notes as we wanted to.

W: It seems like that freedom isn’t there today with most bands.

VW: We were as free-formed as any improvisational jazz bands. So I got all that going for me.

W: Obviously this is a college campus, did you go to college?

VW: No, I dropped out of high school. I was already in a band, who needed school? Why be in school when you could be doing a gig already getting paid? I’d been playing since I was 11. School had very little to do for me, once I got the basic math out of the way I pretty much fucked off the rest of it. But I appreciate going into colleges now. The colleges I’ve played at have music programs and good stuff going for them that probably would have kept me in school had they had that going on when I was going to school.

W: Can you tell the difference between the audience at a college campus compared to any other audience?

VW: Some of them surprise the hell out of me. They know all the words. The one thing I notice about the college campuses is they can show you a lot of support or no support. I’m hoping you’re the kind of college that will show a lot of support. Sometimes you go there and they pay you to come out, do your thing and only three kids will turn up because they’re just blazed about it. It depends if this is a campus full of Deadheads or just a learning facility that happens to have a sideshow come through every now and then. But the one’s that appreciate what’s going on out here have told me that it has changed their lives. I’ve been playing solo as well, and if they get that experience from me playing solo, I imagine that it’ll be even better with a band.

W: Every college has a ton of aspiring musicians …

VW: You know, I’ve been coming out solo to the campuses, I’ve been having anybody that says “hey, I play this” can come up and sit in. I had a bass player from Saint Bonaventure come up and play, it’s a cool thing. I hope that they’ll turn up, it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity. It can’t get much easier, all you have to do is drag your sorry little ass out of the dormitory, brave the snow and get over there. I swear to God if you do, it’ll be a memorable, if not a life-changing experience.

W: Do you have any advice for the kid who wants to make it big in the music business?

VW: You gotta want it so much that money or security or anything else is secondary to that love and desire for the music. Then all you gotta do is never give up and then you’re successful, it’s inevitable. I always knew I was gonna make it. Since the time I was 11 and I loved doing it. It feels like I haven’t worked a day in my life. So keep wanting it, hang in there, don’t give up and make sure that this is in fact what you love to do more than anything.

W: Have you played with Jack Straw before?

VW: I’ve done about three tours with them. I’ve gotten to become quite friendly with all of those guys, Jack, Barry Bowden the keyboard player, takes me around town whenever I have a day off. Last time I was out there I went to three clubs on my day off, sat in the Dark Star Orchestra, Pack and Lee’s and the Mountains of Venus all in one night. It’s a great town and they’re great people and they’re great players, so I feel quite at home with these guys. We’ve got some of their original material worked up as well as some of my post-Dead songs.

W: Why should the average person come see Jack Straw?

VW: You’ll be hearing music of the Grateful Dead. There’s a really big place for that now, especially that Jerry’s gone and can no longer sing his songs live. They’re keepers to the flame. With or without me, they’re a really good band plus the Grateful Dead. If that’s your love in life, then you’re in fucking heaven.

W: Well, thanks for your time, anything else you want to add?

VW: Let’s see. Well, let’s all come to the show and change the world. Right now a lot of people are thinking that we’re watching it end. I believe that we can either watch it end or we can save it, but come to the show and at least for one night we can feel like we’re saving the world instead of watching it end.

W: So what’s your take on the world today, or on the war on terror?

VW: I don’t want to get political because we were never that, but we have to do what we have to do to protect ourselves. At the same time we have to change what makes so many people hate us and I’m not proud to be a part of a country that was based on the Romans who were sadistic motherfuckers and now it seems like we’re still a very much a barbaric, sadistic country. After all these years, you’d think that we’d grow up. No matter whose ass we kick now, if we don’t get down to the root of why people hate us and change that so we all become “us”, instead of “us vs. them,” there’s no end in sight. It’s just gonna be like Palestine and Israel. As far as I’m concerned, nobody should say one word about that war, nobody should televise it, because it’s not real. There’s only one emotion, it’s not two emotions, it’s not love and fear, there’s only one real emotion in the spirit world and we are all spirits just hanging out in bodies, and that is love. As long as there’s not that, then it will always be us and them and it will always be somebody coming after us. Then we’re going back after them. You’d think after seeing the Romans and all of history go by, and they make you memorize war dates, what does that tell you about a civilization? We’re not very evolved people. Now’s the time where we can change all of that and if we don’t then I say we’re all gonna go the route of the Romans. People will be digging up our bones later going why were these guys such barbaric, fucking idiots. We have to defend ourselves, but I think we have to get down to the root of the hate, kill that off. If we’re gonna kill anything we should kill off the things that make other countries hate us. There’s gotta be some validity in their gripe. There can’t be that many people that are all wrong. We definitely gotta find out how to all get along. But don’t expect any of this shit on stage, you’ll have to bring me out on a lecture tour for that. Rule No. 1 with the Dead was that we don’t talk about this stuff, but I’ll be glad to hang with any of you guys and talk about it, off the record. I’m not here to preach, I’m here to play music.