Lets start right off with Steve Ruderman and Patrick Mangan talking in the storefront of T.C.'s Speakeasy in Ypsilanti.

Patrick: First off what is your full name?

Steve: Steven Louis Ruderman

Patrick: When and where were you born?

Steve: I was born In New York City in 1949. New York Doctors Hospital.

Patrick: Are you the old man in the band?

Steve: By far.

Patrick: What's your birth date?

Steve: February 4th.

Patrick: I know you have kids. How many kids?

Steve: Two kids.

Patrick: Name and ages?

Steve: Mosie - 25 and Lela - 22.

Patrick: Are you still married?

Steve: No. Divorced since 1981.

Patrick: Are you currently in any other bands?

Steve: No.

Patrick: You've been in a lot of previous bands? Like Woodrose?

Steve: Yeah. Woodrose was in West Virginia.

Patrick: When was that?

Steve: That was like '77 to '85.

Patrick: Was that like a Dead cover band?

Steve: We started out, the first year we played acoustic, but with a lot of Dead stuff also and some Country and Bluegrass.

Patrick: Then you went electric?

Steve: Then we went electric and kind of gradually went to more and more Dead.

Patrick: Were you ever in Assembly Required?

Steve: No. I'd met the guys and sat in vocally a couple of times.

Patrick: So Woodrose ... What was between ..?

Steve: That was in West Virginia, then I moved here and I wasn't in a band for a long time. From like '86 to when DS6 started.

Patrick:When was that?

Steve: New Years Eve 1992/93.

Patrick: Do you guys prepare a setlist beforehand?

Steve: Yeah.

Patrick: How much time before the show?

Steve: Me and Sean spend a couple of hours talking on Mondays. And we hash out the setlist.

Patrick: You change it though, I remember one time at Cross Street...?

Steve: Yeah. Once in a while we'll change it at the last minute.

Patrick: In between sets?

Steve: Anytime, things will happen. Some one wants to sit in, they might do a song you know, that's a lot more condusive to you know, a reggae singer or harp player.

Patrick: Who's that guy that sat in with you guys before [at the Heidelberg] on guitar?

Steve: He is someone Sean knows.

Patrick: Speaking of the Heidelberg. You were out of there for a while. It being the first gig you went back to was it kind of disorienting?

Steve: Yeah. That was like our old home base. Like T.C.'s is now. We played New Years, we got invited to play the Heidelberg at that New Years, and we didn't even know if we were going to be a band at that point. And we got two invitations to play from that New Years show. One was the Heidelberg, we did real well and we played there regularly 'til they went to all D.J.

Patrick: Do people hit you with the you look like Jerry thing?

Steve: Sometimes.

Patrick: Then they say oh your not lead guitar and your'e not singing his songs?

Steve: They just think it's funny, they go like, you look more like Jerry but you do more of the Bob Weir songs.We tried it like that, we tried to at first not to do all Jerry songs. In the other band I did a lot of Jerry songs. I just don't like being categorized.

Patrick: So you own your own paint company? Contracting?

Steve: Yeah.

Patrick: Ann Arbor?

Steve: A little more like near my house - Whitmore Lake.

Patrick: So how long have you been living here?

Steve: Michigan? Since '86, my ex-wife moved here with my kids, so I moved here to be nearer to my kids.

Patrick: And they were all together in West Virginia?

Steve: Yeah.

Patrick: How is it keeping up with Sean? Do you know when to follow him into jams and stuff?

Steve: Yeah We pretty much know and play really well together. We're like in sync of each other 98% of the time. It's like we always have the same energy and we always bring each other back, you know we compliment each other. We pretty well follow the rhythms, cause we been playing so long together. We try to get original in our jams. We try to go different places in our jams. So we don't rehearse that kind of stuff and different people come up with different ideas. And Will plays with much different bands.

Patrick: So when you rehearse you just do the basics of the song?

Steve: Yeah > Once in awhile we'll like wait a minute, we're having too much fun, we'll put a good jam in and learn the songs. But we'll go out there, once in a while.

Patrick: What are your favorite songs you like to perform, not just the ones you sing on?

Steve: Oh I don't know, I like a lot of them. I always push some. People come up with a lot of ideas. I'm not always conscious of what we're saying, as opposed to what we're putting out. I feel your out there doing something that you should make the effort. I don't like songs that I feel are negative. So I like kind of get some disagreements about that.

Patrick: Which ones do you like more?

Steve: I like most of what we do.

Patrick: What was it like in New York?

Steve: I grew up in the Catskill Mountains about a hundred miles from New York City. Very rural, wilderness. It's the borscht belt, so there were a lot of hotels there. We used to sneak into the hotels. Of course in the summer the population would increase, then it would be like 10 or 20% there for the wintertime. It was very quiet rural scene. Very small high school I went to, like about a hundred
people. My grade school was like one class with 25 people, so I grew up with those people all my life. And I'm still good friends with a lot of them. I'm still close friends with maybe a dozen people.

Patrick: Did you get bussed to school?

Steve: Yeah. But it was nice cause it was so close to New York.

Patrick: Did you get their radio signals?

Steve: Yeah. Got their T.V. and radio, my father would take me to ball games all the time. When I got older we got to see music, we'd drive down into the city for shows. Took us about 2 hours.

Patrick: Broadway too?

Steve: Yeah Broadway too. Saw a lot of Broadway shows.

Patrick: What about influences? What were you listening to?

Steve: I have a lot of influences. I was brought up on classical music. I played trumpet. I went to music camp in the summer. Then I played in the orchestra in college. I went to college in Syracuse. I toured Europe in the Syracuse Orchestra. Practiced our first show in Belgium, we were warming up that night and someone came knocking on our door and says I play trumpet too. I heard you guys play. It
was Dizzy Gillespie. And we ended up like playing, he said let me go get my trumpet. We ended up hanging out with him for two full days. He was there trying to pick up college girls.

Patrick: What other influences?

Steve: Other than that there was Motown, Folk, Country, Peter Paul and Mary and Pete Seger was up there in the Catskills.

Patrick: Dylan recuperated up there in '66?

Steve: Dylan was up there. I knew people who knew Dylan before he even put out his first album. Woodstock was only twenty minutes away. Living there every day of my life, so we knew the backroads to get back stage. We had to work every morning at 7 o'clock. We figured out ways to the back stage area. So people are walking twelve miles (to the Woodstock Festival in '69) and we were like driving
up these logger roads going back getting to work at seven in the morning. Working til three thirty and shooting back in at 6 o'clock every night. So Woodstock really changed me a lot. Down through the years I decided music as a way of life.

Patrick: I like having music in my life, I don't know how to play but I like listening to it. Making tapes and cd's. How many times do you rehearse a song before you perform it?

Steve: It depends. If it's like Unbroken Chain it takes awhile. Other things we can get in like one sitting. A couple of things, like tonight (12-22-01) we'll try Looks Like Rain on only one sitting. Usually something like that we'd work on twice. Then like the other night at the Heidelberg we improvised Eyes of the World. This part of the jam where it goes da da da da da da.

Patrick: Yeah 'cause the Dead do that all the time.

Steve: '72 or '74 they started doing that.

Patrick: For awhile I said Why don't you guys do that? You did it here once didn't you?

Steve: We did it once.

Patrick: I love that part.

Steve: That kind of stuff we worked on maybe three times.

Patrick: So now you'll do like an Eyes Of The World and add it in?

Steve: Yeah. We try to change how we do stuff, like the Dead. It's interesting, we don't see ourselves as just a cover band, we just play the songs that we like. And then we try to make it into whatever, and that night whatever the vibe is from the audience and then hopefully we can change it and make it into some kind of interesting jam. Those are the most fun parts to me when we jam like somebody will pick up the rhythm and we'll go wow that was cool. And everyone in the band will do that one time or another. Which is the cool thing, it's something we all know.

Patrick: I think I'm done. Thanks alot.

Steve: You're welcome.