Cameron Diaz and Jerry Seinfeld Coach Adam Levine on 'SNL'

Cameron Diaz and Jerry Seinfeld Coach Adam Levine on 'SNL'The Sopranos go back to high school and Joe Biden parties at the Dover Motor Speedway $(document).ready(function() { $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .email-content').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.email').hide(); } ); $('.socialActionsTop .pageActions .print-page').hover( function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').show(); }, function() { $('.socialActionsTop .bubble.print').hide(); } ); }); By

Last night’s Saturday Night Live, hosted by Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine with musical guest Kendrick Lamar, reminded me of high school. Not because of Levine’s acting, which was worse than the time I tried to explain to my math teacher that I had "a make-up drum lesson" for the third week in a row. Nor because Levine’s comedic timing went totally missing (again, "make-up drum lesson"). And not because I was simply over it about half way through, but rather because so many of this week's sketches represented high school archetypes.

The Popular Beauty: Adam Levine took to the stage for his monologue, dapper in a suit, yet perfectly unshaven. But perhaps in his week with the SNL writers, at some point he realized that he badly needed to hide his insecurities. So former SNL star Andy Samberg, movie star Cameron Diaz and television legend Jerry Seinfeld all joined in for the opening, playing "comedy judges" in a nod to Levine’s role on The Voice. Each star helped shoulder the comedy load, and let Levine focus on where his true talents apparently lie: in taking his shirt off.

The High School Grad Who Comes Back to Party: Remember when Andy Samberg left SNL in a blaze of glory, tying up his Digital Short legacy with a bow by not only creating a blowout 100th Digital Short (featuring Usher, Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, Will Ferrell, Natalie Portman, and Michael Bolton), but closing the circle nicely with Lazy Sunday 2? That was last season. Well guess who came back from college to drink at the golf course with this year’s upper classmen? Andy and his Lonely Island cohorts teamed up with Adam Levine and Kendrick Lamar to relive the good old days . . . by doing a Digital Short where they rap about YOLO, an acronym that is beyond ancient in internet time. Better names for the video would have been SMH or zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The Quiet Nerd Who Will Flourish Down the Line: "The Sopranos Diaries" was an amazing pre-produced video, which re-imagined the main characters of the legendary HBO show, in a 1980s John Hughes-ian world, on the CW network. The attention to detail was what really carried this bit, from the double popped collars of young Tony Soprano (Bobby Moynihan), to Tony’s bestowing the name Big Pussy to a new friend Sal, to a teenage (and also adult) argument with Carmela (Kate McKinnon), to the grey sides of Paulie’s Flock of Seagulls hair. It might not be the most popular sketch of the night, but in years to come, people will look back and give it its proper due.

The Dumb Jock: A bar fight between upbeat bands Maroon 5 and Train?! And throw in Bill Hader as John Mayer and Jason Sudekis as Jason Mraz?! And a Hootie (without the Blowfish) joke?! This one had potential to do great things, but fell into typical amateur traps, and after transferring schools a couple times, came back to town in the end to work as a parking lot attendant.

The Girl Next Door: This sketch was almost too good to be true, the one you initially dismiss, but see that it was definitely worth your time once you give it a shot. SNL’s take on the MTV show Catfish: The TV Series hit on every major theme you want it to: the unbearable focus on cornball host Nev (Adam Levine), his pointless videographer Max (Taran Killam), the sad nature of online "relationships" between people like hopeful redneck Jas (the wonderful Aidy Bryant) and her beau, Ace Applebees, whose family supposedly owns every Applebees restaurant, and who has the face of Brian Williams. Ace is played by – SPOILER ALERT – not Brian Williams, but Jay Pharoah.

The Class Vice President: Who still cares about the Senior Class President? No one . . . until they invite you to your ten-year reunion via Facebook. The person to remember was the fun-loving Vice President, who may have lacked in fully-formed ideas, but made up for it with laughs and energy. And that’s what last night’s Ten-to-One sketch provided in "Biden Bash," the official Vice-Presidential celebration at the Dover Motor Speedway, featuring a dog show, bouncy castle and Joe Biden’s kung-fu exhibition. Tremendous, and if there’s a god in heaven, an actual event.

Ah, high school. A sweet time, a simpler time, a time when Adam Levine was solely a singer, not an actor.

Last Week's Recap: 'SNL' Takes On Lance Armstrong and Manti Te'o as Jennifer Lawrence Hosts

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Jerry Seinfeld's Second Act

Ricky Gervais and Jerry Seinfeld in 'Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.'

You can think of Jerry Seinfeld and Breaking Bad as competing myths of American manhood. In the Walter White version, you get a death sentence – a terminal disease, with just a short time to live. What do you do with your last shot? You become as evil and violent and corrupt as you ever could have feared, but you also become master of your domain – and you like it.

And then there's the Jerry Seinfeld version. In this timeline, you reach the same plateau, dragging around the same bile and neurosis, except you get the opposite diagnosis: an endless future of infinite possibility. You achieve all the success you ever craved. You can retire, have kids, collect vintage cars. You can do whatever you want, forever. So you do nothing.

Jerry got a life sentence of nothing with Seinfeld and he's still doing the time, as he shows on his new Web series, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Seinfeld is around the same age as Walt White, but you can't imagine him spelling out his age with bacon for a laugh. Walt got a death warrant and feels born again; Jerry got a lifetime pass and feels bored. Which fate is tougher?

It's baffling that nearly 15 years after Jerry pulled the plug on Seinfeld, at the height of its success, he still hasn't figured out his Plan B. People still obsess over the continuing agony of Jerry Seinfeld. People love to fantasize: What's it like to hit that kind of success, walk away from it while you're on top, and then struggle to come up with an encore? How do you compete with the legacy of Seinfeld? And what the hell do you do all day?

Jerry wonders about that, too. So he makes a clever joke out of it with Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. He's gone for the hipster cred of online video, taking a low-budget approach. In each episode, he picks up a famous comedian in one of his vintage cars, then they go for some coffee and talk shop. He picks up Larry David in a 1952 Volkswagen bug, and Ricky Gervais gets a 1967 Austin-Healey. That's the whole concept. The simplicity of it raises the question: Why is Jerry doing this? It looks like Jerry has the same question, which makes Comedians in Cars compelling on an emotional level, as well as a pleasant hang with famous dudes. It has a "Ladies Who Lunch" feel. Nobody has to be there; nobody needs the exposure. They probably don't even need the coffee. They drive around. They have a pretty good time. They wonder why this is all happening.

The fact that Jerry is still funny might be the weirdest part of his profoundly weird afterlife. Larry David is right when he tells Jerry that with Comedians in Cars, he "finally has done the show about nothing" that Seinfeld aspired to be. But it's a different kind of nothing, because there really is something at stake here. Every scene is haunted by the questions any adult male asks about his life: Did I make the wrong decision? Could my life have gone in another direction? How much time have I wasted? Did I blow it?

And ultimately, that seems to be why people are still so fascinated with Seinfeld – we ask these questions about his life, because it distracts us from asking these questions about our lives. And somehow it's touching that Seinfeld – despite his 46 or so Porsches and his $32 million mansion – has the same doubts. So Comedians in Cars is not anything as banal as Jerry Seinfeld needing to prove he's still got it, or anything as simple as him needing to get off the couch. It's just the need to do something. Because sometimes nothing isn't enough.

This story is from the August 30th, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone.

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Jerry Lee Lewis Marries Cousin's Ex-Wife

Jerry Lee Lewis performs in Chicago in 2011.

Jerry Lee Lewis has married his cousin's ex-wife, CNN reports. This is the seventh marriage for the 76-year-old rocker, who wed Judith Brown on March 9th in Natchez, Mississippi. Brown was once married to Lewis' cousin Rusty Brown.

Lewis is no stranger to unconventional paths to romance. The singer infamously married his cousin, Myra Gale Brown - Rusty's sister – when he was 23 and she was only 13-years-old back in 1958. This marriage, a tabloid sensation at the time, tarnished Lewis' reputation and did some damage to his career.

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Jerry Lee Lewis Marries Cousin's Ex-Wife

Jerry Lee Lewis performs in Chicago in 2011.

Jerry Lee Lewis has married his cousin's ex-wife, CNN reports. This is the seventh marriage for the 76-year-old rocker, who wed Judith Brown on March 9th in Natchez, Mississippi. Brown was once married to Lewis' cousin Rusty Brown.

Lewis is no stranger to unconventional paths to romance. The singer infamously married his cousin, Myra Gale Brown - Rusty's sister – when he was 23 and she was only 13-years-old back in 1958. This marriage, a tabloid sensation at the time, tarnished Lewis' reputation and did some damage to his career.

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Grateful Dead Drummer: Jerry Garcia 'Wasn’t Really Happy Playing' at Band's End

Grateful Dead's Bill Kreutzmann performs with 7 Walkers on Jam Cruise 10.

Leaving the Grateful Dead behind in 1995 was as much a defining force in drummer Bill Kreutzmann's life as was forming the band with Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan 30 years earlier. And, in some ways, he's still dealing with the fallout. As Kreutzmann discusses exclusively with Rolling Stone, when the group disbanded following Garcia's untimely death, he took off for Hawaii and disappeared for awhile. Part of the reason for Kreutzmann's reclusive period was to honor his word to his fallen bandmate and partly to get his health – and his head – back together. Surprisingly, he says that he believes the Grateful Dead were at the end of the line, even if Garcia had survived.

And while Kreutzmann toured off and on with Grateful Dead spinoff bands such as the Dead and the Other Ones throughout the following decade, it wasn't until much more recently that he finally found a musical project as satisfying as performing in the Grateful Dead proper. Last year, Kreutzmann formed 7 Walkers with bluesman Papa Mali, bassist George Porter Jr. (the Meters) and keyboardist Matt Hubbard (Willie Nelson). Joined by special guest Steve Kimock on guitar – and featuring ample cameos from Karl Denson and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, among others – the group set sail on the high seas with Jam Cruise last week, performing a pair of shows on a sold-out ship bound for Haiti, Jamaica and all points jammed between. Between his sets with 7 Walkers and late-night appearances in the never-ending Jam Room, Kreutzmann sat down with Rolling Stone in the ship's wine bar to take a look back at yet another long strange trip.

The Grateful Dead are often credited as the forefathers of the jam band scene upon which the vibe of Jam Cruise is based. Can you talk about being one of the elder statesmen on the ship?
First of all, I love doing Jam Cruise. This is the second one I've done. I like doing it so much. The audience, the people on board are just as cool as can be and they're all into jam music. And I get to meet all these musicians that I don't normally get to hang with. So I get to rub shoulders and hang out with these different people and we get to play, like tonight in the Jam Room – it's going to be insane. I heard it's been kinda quiet in there the last few nights, so I figured I better show up. George Porter Jr. is going to show up and then Papa Mali too, so we'll get it raging in there; we'll warm it up.

Jam Cruise is sort of because of the jam scene, and the Grateful Dead often get complimented for starting the jam band scene. And maybe that is true, but in my head jazz musicians jammed forever, way before rock musicians. We might be one of the first rock bands to really jam and that might be the truth and that's cool; when I see all these new musicians playing great music and jamming like crazy, I'm really honored. It's not that I'm honored personally, I'm honored to the music – the music is being honored by musicians keeping it alive. And that's what I really like.

You've already been in one of the world's most successful bands – for three decades. You don't need to do anything for a living anymore. You could retire and live happily ever after. So why still do it?
I just don't see myself as retiring. As long as I'm healthy and can play the drums, that's what I'm going to do because that's the most fun thing that I know how to do. And to make people happy from playing music is the best reward you can have in your life – instead of being an insurance salesman or whatever, whatever, you know. Playing music is just one of the best things. I can't retire.

When Jerry left us in '95, besides being totally hurt and forlorn, basically lonesome, I was lost in every direction. I didn't know what to do. I went to Kauai mostly to heal. Jerry and I had this gentlemen's agreement that if the Grateful Dead ever stopped, we were both going to move to Hawaii. Unfortunately he couldn't keep his part of the deal, but I moved there after the Grateful Dead ended in the Summer of '95 because I needed to heal. I had really been burning hard and doing the things that everybody knows that rockers do on the road and this gave me a chance to really catch my breath and heal again. And get healthy. I surf and I got in much better shape and took care of my life. That was very, very important.

But the thing that was missing was a band that could fill the level that I like to have with music that the Grateful Dead did. And I don't mean a copy band of any sort; the bands that I played in afterward, the Dead and the Other Ones and all that, up until 2009, they were okay bands – the musicians were always really great – but I always missed one guy. I couldn't help that in my heart. The Grateful Dead without Jerry Garcia was like the Miles Davis Band without Miles Davis.

So, finally, 15 years after Jerry left, I got to meet Papa Mali. And that was like one of the most fortunate things to ever happen to me. My girlfriend Amy, who is now my wife, introduced me to Papa Mali. She played his music for me at home in Hawaii and I just went, "Oh man, that cat's for real!" And I've always loved New Orleans music. I always loved it when the Neville Brothers opened up for the Grateful Dead, and the Dirty Dozen and all that.

And finally I met a guy that I could totally believe in as a musician. As Jerry did, [Mali] has total knowledge of all kinds of music. He's got like 10,000 vinyl records, got them on every wall on his house, so knowledgeable and just a really wonderful person to play music with and he sings great and he's the one person I've heard sing Jerry songs that I really like his voice doing it. I mean, 7 Walkers doesn't have all the instrumentation that the Grateful Dead did, but I just like the way we approach it. What I'm getting at is that I've had to wait this long, 15 years, to really get back. And that's the reason I'm here on Jam Cruise; I'm back playing again with musicians I really believe in. And that's very important to me. These guys have got to be the guys or else I don't want to do it.

You say you can't retire from music. All of the other remaining members of the Grateful Dead seem to feel the same way. Do you think if Jerry Garcia was still around that the Grateful Dead would still be touring?
No, I don't think so. I think that Jerry had gotten kind of bored with the Grateful Dead, and it was sort of like a marriage that had maybe gone on too long. And other people in the band wanted to start to express themselves in their bands and so forth and so on, that I'm pretty sure Jerry would've stopped playing in the Grateful Dead. I think a lot of it, I hate to say, was really a financial obligation. He needed to earn the money for some things and that's too bad. But it's hard. He was a true artist and I can tell you he wasn't really happy playing in the Grateful Dead at the end. I hate to say that. I know the audience is going to hear me say that and go, "Oh, that's not true," but if people really think about some of the shows that were there in the last year and some of the troubles that poor Jerry had, they know that I'm not BS'ing.

I really like to go for the essence of things, the most beautiful parts of things, of human beings or of music. If there are things in there that are getting in the way and complicating it, it's just not good for me. It's hard for me, too. Once again, I said it earlier, but the reason I went to Hawaii was to heal those things.

In talking about the new Dave's Picks live release series, Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux recently told Rolling Stone that he informs everyone in the band what the next live release will be. He sends them advance copies, but he's not sure any of the band members actually ever put them on. When a new live Grateful Dead release comes out, do you listen to it?
I do. And the one that comes to mind right away is the new Europe '72 [The Complete Recordings] release. I went back and listened and on a couple of the CDs in that set – there's one that has "The Other One" into some kind of jam back into "The Other One" – the music is just fantastic. It blows my mind to this moment. I like that music, the looser music like "Bird Song" or "The Other One," because they're really heavily jam-oriented. The Garcia songs are always my favorite, but the jam parts are really my favorite.

There's now even a Grateful Dead video game on the market. Do you pay attention to that stuff? I mean, the non-musical commercial releases, licensing and merchandising?
I don't always; some of it I do and some of it I don't. I trust David Lemieux a million percent and when he says something is worth going for, then I do it. And I don't have to listen to everything or get everything – my house would be awful full of stuff. Whatever it is: dog collars . . . there's a company now that makes Grateful Dead dog toys, and since I'm a dog lover and have dogs at home I said, "Yeah, go ahead."

While on Jam Cruise, do you go on shore and take advantage of the port stops?
I do. I got in the water today. We were in Haiti, and I got off at the port and went swimming at the designated beach, because the water is so warm; it's warmer than where I live in Hawaii right now . . . they had to drag me out of the water, just about.

Do you have a favorite Jam Cruise memory?
Yes, I do. It's from the last Jam Cruise I went on. It was after my last show with the Rhythm Devils – I played that cruise with the Rhythm Devils and Mickey Hart – and I went to the Jam Room after midnight and George [Porter Jr.] was holding court there, and I played with him for awhile. I got a little tired, and I stopped and then Johnny Vidacovich sat in, a fantastic drummer. And that guy, Johnny V., is the reason drumming is what it is in New Orleans today, a lot of it. A lot of really good studio stuff, too. George was holding court, playing in the Jam Room, and I couldn't leave. Me and Amy sat back there, we were beat, we actually sat back a bit off to the right side of the stage, behind it, and my jaw just dropped just listening to them play. So I remember that the most because that was just so much fun.

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Grateful Dead Drummer: Jerry Garcia 'Wasn’t Really Happy Playing' at Band's End

Grateful Dead's Bill Kreutzmann performs with 7 Walkers on Jam Cruise 10.

Leaving the Grateful Dead behind in 1995 was as much a defining force in drummer Bill Kreutzmann's life as was forming the band with Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan 30 years earlier. And, in some ways, he's still dealing with the fallout. As Kreutzmann discusses exclusively with Rolling Stone, when the group disbanded following Garcia's untimely death, he took off for Hawaii and disappeared for awhile. Part of the reason for Kreutzmann's reclusive period was to honor his word to his fallen bandmate and partly to get his health – and his head – back together. Surprisingly, he says that he believes the Grateful Dead were at the end of the line, even if Garcia had survived.

And while Kreutzmann toured off and on with Grateful Dead spinoff bands such as the Dead and the Other Ones throughout the following decade, it wasn't until much more recently that he finally found a musical project as satisfying as performing in the Grateful Dead proper. Last year, Kreutzmann formed 7 Walkers with bluesman Papa Mali, bassist George Porter Jr. (the Meters) and keyboardist Matt Hubbard (Willie Nelson). Joined by special guest Steve Kimock on guitar – and featuring ample cameos from Karl Denson and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, among others – the group set sail on the high seas with Jam Cruise last week, performing a pair of shows on a sold-out ship bound for Haiti, Jamaica and all points jammed between. Between his sets with 7 Walkers and late-night appearances in the never-ending Jam Room, Kreutzmann sat down with Rolling Stone in the ship's wine bar to take a look back at yet another long strange trip.

The Grateful Dead are often credited as the forefathers of the jam band scene upon which the vibe of Jam Cruise is based. Can you talk about being one of the elder statesmen on the ship?
First of all, I love doing Jam Cruise. This is the second one I've done. I like doing it so much. The audience, the people on board are just as cool as can be and they're all into jam music. And I get to meet all these musicians that I don't normally get to hang with. So I get to rub shoulders and hang out with these different people and we get to play, like tonight in the Jam Room – it's going to be insane. I heard it's been kinda quiet in there the last few nights, so I figured I better show up. George Porter Jr. is going to show up and then Papa Mali too, so we'll get it raging in there; we'll warm it up.

Jam Cruise is sort of because of the jam scene, and the Grateful Dead often get complimented for starting the jam band scene. And maybe that is true, but in my head jazz musicians jammed forever, way before rock musicians. We might be one of the first rock bands to really jam and that might be the truth and that's cool; when I see all these new musicians playing great music and jamming like crazy, I'm really honored. It's not that I'm honored personally, I'm honored to the music – the music is being honored by musicians keeping it alive. And that's what I really like.

You've already been in one of the world's most successful bands – for three decades. You don't need to do anything for a living anymore. You could retire and live happily ever after. So why still do it?
I just don't see myself as retiring. As long as I'm healthy and can play the drums, that's what I'm going to do because that's the most fun thing that I know how to do. And to make people happy from playing music is the best reward you can have in your life – instead of being an insurance salesman or whatever, whatever, you know. Playing music is just one of the best things. I can't retire.

When Jerry left us in '95, besides being totally hurt and forlorn, basically lonesome, I was lost in every direction. I didn't know what to do. I went to Kauai mostly to heal. Jerry and I had this gentlemen's agreement that if the Grateful Dead ever stopped, we were both going to move to Hawaii. Unfortunately he couldn't keep his part of the deal, but I moved there after the Grateful Dead ended in the Summer of '95 because I needed to heal. I had really been burning hard and doing the things that everybody knows that rockers do on the road and this gave me a chance to really catch my breath and heal again. And get healthy. I surf and I got in much better shape and took care of my life. That was very, very important.

But the thing that was missing was a band that could fill the level that I like to have with music that the Grateful Dead did. And I don't mean a copy band of any sort; the bands that I played in afterward, the Dead and the Other Ones and all that, up until 2009, they were okay bands – the musicians were always really great – but I always missed one guy. I couldn't help that in my heart. The Grateful Dead without Jerry Garcia was like the Miles Davis Band without Miles Davis.

So, finally, 15 years after Jerry left, I got to meet Papa Mali. And that was like one of the most fortunate things to ever happen to me. My girlfriend Amy, who is now my wife, introduced me to Papa Mali. She played his music for me at home in Hawaii and I just went, "Oh man, that cat's for real!" And I've always loved New Orleans music. I always loved it when the Neville Brothers opened up for the Grateful Dead, and the Dirty Dozen and all that.

And finally I met a guy that I could totally believe in as a musician. As Jerry did, [Mali] has total knowledge of all kinds of music. He's got like 10,000 vinyl records, got them on every wall on his house, so knowledgeable and just a really wonderful person to play music with and he sings great and he's the one person I've heard sing Jerry songs that I really like his voice doing it. I mean, 7 Walkers doesn't have all the instrumentation that the Grateful Dead did, but I just like the way we approach it. What I'm getting at is that I've had to wait this long, 15 years, to really get back. And that's the reason I'm here on Jam Cruise; I'm back playing again with musicians I really believe in. And that's very important to me. These guys have got to be the guys or else I don't want to do it.

You say you can't retire from music. All of the other remaining members of the Grateful Dead seem to feel the same way. Do you think if Jerry Garcia was still around that the Grateful Dead would still be touring?
No, I don't think so. I think that Jerry had gotten kind of bored with the Grateful Dead, and it was sort of like a marriage that had maybe gone on too long. And other people in the band wanted to start to express themselves in their bands and so forth and so on, that I'm pretty sure Jerry would've stopped playing in the Grateful Dead. I think a lot of it, I hate to say, was really a financial obligation. He needed to earn the money for some things and that's too bad. But it's hard. He was a true artist and I can tell you he wasn't really happy playing in the Grateful Dead at the end. I hate to say that. I know the audience is going to hear me say that and go, "Oh, that's not true," but if people really think about some of the shows that were there in the last year and some of the troubles that poor Jerry had, they know that I'm not BS'ing.

I really like to go for the essence of things, the most beautiful parts of things, of human beings or of music. If there are things in there that are getting in the way and complicating it, it's just not good for me. It's hard for me, too. Once again, I said it earlier, but the reason I went to Hawaii was to heal those things.

In talking about the new Dave's Picks live release series, Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux recently told Rolling Stone that he informs everyone in the band what the next live release will be. He sends them advance copies, but he's not sure any of the band members actually ever put them on. When a new live Grateful Dead release comes out, do you listen to it?
I do. And the one that comes to mind right away is the new Europe '72 [The Complete Recordings] release. I went back and listened and on a couple of the CDs in that set – there's one that has "The Other One" into some kind of jam back into "The Other One" – the music is just fantastic. It blows my mind to this moment. I like that music, the looser music like "Bird Song" or "The Other One," because they're really heavily jam-oriented. The Garcia songs are always my favorite, but the jam parts are really my favorite.

There's now even a Grateful Dead video game on the market. Do you pay attention to that stuff? I mean, the non-musical commercial releases, licensing and merchandising?
I don't always; some of it I do and some of it I don't. I trust David Lemieux a million percent and when he says something is worth going for, then I do it. And I don't have to listen to everything or get everything – my house would be awful full of stuff. Whatever it is: dog collars . . . there's a company now that makes Grateful Dead dog toys, and since I'm a dog lover and have dogs at home I said, "Yeah, go ahead."

While on Jam Cruise, do you go on shore and take advantage of the port stops?
I do. I got in the water today. We were in Haiti, and I got off at the port and went swimming at the designated beach, because the water is so warm; it's warmer than where I live in Hawaii right now . . . they had to drag me out of the water, just about.

Do you have a favorite Jam Cruise memory?
Yes, I do. It's from the last Jam Cruise I went on. It was after my last show with the Rhythm Devils – I played that cruise with the Rhythm Devils and Mickey Hart – and I went to the Jam Room after midnight and George [Porter Jr.] was holding court there, and I played with him for awhile. I got a little tired, and I stopped and then Johnny Vidacovich sat in, a fantastic drummer. And that guy, Johnny V., is the reason drumming is what it is in New Orleans today, a lot of it. A lot of really good studio stuff, too. George was holding court, playing in the Jam Room, and I couldn't leave. Me and Amy sat back there, we were beat, we actually sat back a bit off to the right side of the stage, behind it, and my jaw just dropped just listening to them play. So I remember that the most because that was just so much fun.

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