The Machine has been paying tribute to Pink Floyd for almost 40 years now, yet the band members are still fine-tuning and making adjustments after playing some of these songs hundreds of times.
“Everyone is still working on it every show. Every time we’re at our instruments — every time, not kidding,” said drummer Tahrah Cohen, who co-founded the band in 1988. “It’s just that way. Very seldom does someone just walk in and hit their pedals or hit their keyboards or drums and say, ‘OK, we’re fine.’ You’re always tweaking, you’re always looking for the right thing. Or maybe you just revisited an album and you’re like, oh, man, this is actually a little slower or faster. The tone of this guitar, there’s a little more reverb or echo and delay on it than I remembered because I haven’t listened to it in a little bit. So you go back and tweak this drum sound, or it could be more fun to play it like this era. We’re always just getting in there and nerding out.”
The Machine, whose area shows in the past have included a date with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, will be back on April 4 at Jergel’s in Warrendale. They’ve also played themed album shows and unplugged performances, but this will be a straight-forward concert.
“Pittsburgh is getting your rock-it-out show where we play everything, no specific theme, just go in and do the music everyone wants to hear, some deep cuts, some jamming,” Cohen said. “Just a very spontaneous, excellent night of Pink Floyd with a great band.”
In a recent phone call from New York, Cohen spoke with TribLive about the different Pink Floyd eras, drummer Nick Mason and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.
Do you remember hearing Pink Floyd for the first time? Were you a fan right away?
“Another Brick in the Wall” was one of my first two 45s that I bought. I bought “Another Brick in the Wall” when it came out. There’s something about the entire piece of music that has always stayed with me. Even when I hear it on the radio today, there’s this feeling and a vibe that still affects me the same way as when I heard it the first time. Just the vibe of it is so unique and so haunting and cool. And then never mind the lyrics because those are equally as intense and great.
What’s your favorite era of Pink Floyd?
It’s funny because with Pink Floyd, I don’t necessarily have a favorite because I appreciate all the eras and iterations that happened with the band. All the Syd Barrett stuff is so unique and humorous and serious and done with so much joy. That’s a very unique moment for them. And then when you get into “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” and “Ummagumma,” they’re changing again. Roger (Waters) has taken over some of the songwriting, or maybe all of it at that point, and things are starting to shift and eventually Dave (Gilmour) joins the band and that breeds another tonality. So I like them all for their different attributes. Of course, I love leading up to “Dark Side” and then “Animals” and “The Wall” and “Wish You Were Here,” all of it. Every era is so different. Think about “The Wall” versus “Animals” and think about “Animals” versus “Dark Side.” They’re just different bands. They constantly reinvent themselves, and then the post-Waters stuff is a little more mechanical, more rigid. I love them all for what they are on their own merits.
What do you think is the most interesting song to play drum-wise?
Anything from the “Animals” album. “Dogs,” in particular, is the most challenging song, I would say, because it’s got a lot of feels. It’s got a straight-ahead feel, it’s got a cut time feel, it’s got that middle section that you’re trying to duplicate some of the echo on the drums that’s happening. And then at the same time, I love the sparsity in all of the drumming, and I love the focus on time and feel. Because the music is so slow, it really demands that your time and your feel be really, really locked in, which doesn’t seem challenging to the average person, because they want to see drummers often times flail and go crazy. But the Pink Floyd music is very the opposite — you have to lay into it and create the vibe. The intro to “Time” is always challenging and always fun and always a little bit scary every time.
As a drummer, do you think Nick Mason doesn’t get enough credit for what he adds to the overall sound of the band?
Yeah, absolutely. It’s like you look at any incredible building — just take the Freedom Tower. After that was rebuilt, and you look at it and you go, wow, that is an incredible effort. It’s an incredible building that’s standing in front of you. You’re like, wow, but not everybody talks about the engineer and the architect. (laughs) You see a building in front of you and you’re like, wow, that’s beautiful.
But Nick is the foundation of the band. He’s the feel of the band. Some people give him credit, but I think on the whole, drummers don’t recognize him in their top 10 favorite drummers. He’s just so subtle and nuanced. People enjoy the music as a whole, but his drumming I definitely think is underrated, and not just because I’ve been playing Pink Floyd for my whole life. When you listen to the intro to “Time” with the rototom solo, that’s a drum solo. You don’t think of it as a drum solo — everyone doesn’t leave the stage and the drummer goes wild for 10 minutes — but that is a drum solo. How many drum solos can you remember little licks and riffs from? Maybe a few, but I think it’s the greatest drum solo ever in rock music. It’s very difficult. It’s very sparse. And again, your time has to be right on, and it’s a beautiful solo. I love it. My favorite one.
What are some of the favorite obscure songs that you don’t think get enough love in the Pink Floyd catalog?
I love “When You’re In” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun.” I love all the Syd Barrett-era stuff. That’s fun to play. “See Emily Play” and “Lucifer Sam” and “Bike” and “Octopus.” That’s the Syd era, “Dark Globe.” They’re just amazing songs. Some of them are pre-Dave Gilmour, but a lot of the old music is fantastic and fun and quirky, and you get to hear them from where they came from to where they landed, and it’s fantastic and marvelous.
With The Machine, how do you think your show captures the spirit of a Pink Floyd concert?
We’re a very organic band. And not to say the other bands are inorganic, but we make our setlist a day or so ahead of the show. We look at, OK, we haven’t played this in this venue in a long time, let’s play this song. And maybe somebody in particular wants to play a song or a few songs from a record. So the setlist develops organically from the band based on the fans, based on what we wanna play. A lot of the other bands go out and do the same show every night, and that’s not us. A lot of bands don’t really improvise, and we do. The people that come to see us, our fans love that aspect of us. We’re not a jam band. We’re not jamming the whole night. But we’re gonna take a moment or two or five to stretch out where you can and not step on the integrity of the song. So we’re giving you the hits, the obscurities, and four people on stage recreating Floyd, giving you some improv, giving you some live realness that you can connect to the audience, and the audience can connect to us as people and players, as opposed to just this, pardon the phrase, “this machine” just pumping out Pink Floyd. We’re giving you four musicians and realness.
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How about the sensory experience being such a big part of the Pink Floyd experience too?
That is definitely a part of the show. We have elaborate lighting, we have video. We take the audio very, very seriously. But our focus is on the music and the musicians, but the production is there to enhance the show, not to be the show.
You can’t ignore one for the other.
Right. We’re not ignoring the production. It’s there. It’s awesome. Powerful. But this is about music fundamentally.