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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 26, 2001)
buffaloexchange.com Don’t have a cowman, Conte to EMU Suite 300 Wayne Krantz jams and talks shnp ■ Krantz will play Taylor’s on Saturday and lead a free, two-hour workshop on campus By Mason West Oregon Daily Emerald Guitarist Wayne Krantz complet ed his latest CD, “Greenwich Mean,” by compiling recordings of his band’s weekly gigs at 55 Bar in New York City. Krantz said he owes the wealth of material to Marc Bobrowsky, a de vout music fan who attended the performances every week with small microphones attached to the side of his glasses that would record the sets on digital audio tape. Krantz said having so many recordings to choose from was great, because “re ally stellar” nights of improvisation o College Students -*20.00 | 822-3220 Have you injured the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) of your knee? We are looking for people who have had ACL surgery to participate in research at the UO. Please contact Noah at 346-1033. 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Krantz said Bobrowsky started giving the tapes to him, and they sounded good enough to use for the CD instead of setting up a special recording session. Krantz selected portions of music from the tapes and edited them together on his computer, though he said there were no alterations. He said the re sult sounds just as good as a profes sional live recording, with one small exception. “A couple times you can hear when he turns his head,” Krantz said. The unorthodox recording of “Greenwich Mean” reflects the atti tude Krantz is taking toward his musical career. The CD is only avail able on his Web site, www.waynekrantz.com, which he designed and maintains. Krantz also organized the tour he is on cur rently, which stops in Eugene on Oct. 27 at Taylor’s Bar and Grille. B jom Estlun d, talent buyer for Tay lor’s, said he booked Krantz after get ting a heads up from friends at Jam Base, a Web site for jam bands touring the West Coast. Estlund said his con tacts would let him know “whenever something amazing came through. ” Estlund quickly read the informa tion on Krantz available through Jam Base and listened to “Greenwich Mean.” Those two things alone per suaded Estlund to book the gig. “The guy’s incredible,” he said. Estlund worked directly with Krantz to book the show, as Krantz has done for all his other tour stops. Krantz said all the responsibilities he is taking on are beginning to wear him down, and it’s starting to have negative effects. “In the last two or three months, I’ve never played guitar so little,” he said. “I’ve gone two or three days without touching it.” The 45-year-old musician has been playing guitar since he was 13 years old and said he hasn’t done anything else since. He said he has become so familiar with the instru ment that music has become a sec ond language for him. When I m playing, I don t even know how to talk,” he said. Though he said re-entering the world after a show can be draining, he said he never tires of performing. “I want to play as many nights as I can, but that means you have to ap peal to as many people as possible without compromising your mu sic,” he said. Krantz said one of the draws of his shows is the note on his bio which says “ex-sideman with Steely Dan. ” The title means almost nothing to Krantz, and he said he wouldn’t even include it if it weren’t for media desire for a tie-in. He added that he didn’t think any one “who comes to Taylor’s even knows who Steely Dan is. ” For whatever reason the audience comes to his shows, once a person ar rives, he said “they’re in our hands.” “On a tour in England, a substan tial number of Steely Dan fans came to the show because they saw me play there with them a while ago,” Krantz said. “They were expecting something like Steely Dan, but they got something completely different and were happy with it.” Courtesy photo Former Steely Dan guitarist Wayne Krantz is on a solo tour of clubs to promote “Greenwich Mean, ” his latest CD. Krantz booked the shows for the tour himself. Krantz said his music is “pretty open-ear” and is based almost en tirely on improvisation. He said 99 percent of the music on “Greenwich Mean” is improvisation based on skeletal song bases. “It’s so improvisational... that the songs almost didn’t matter. Usually the people that see us are those that get off on creation like that,” Krantz said. The 21 tracks on the album are all instrumental sections from long jams. To make the CD more struc tured, Krantz gave titles to the selec tions that became “songs. ” “I just wrote out names that I like, and I tried to match them to the tracks. I’m really happy with the ti tles on the record,” he said. Aside from being the title of the CD, “Greenwich Mean” is one of the song titles, along with “the end of Wednesday,” “escape from obliv ion” and “elephant.” Krantz said ti tles have always been tough for him because he doesn’t generally write songs about specific people, places or things. On a previous album, Krantz said he titled the tracks after people he knew. “Greenwich Mean” was re leased in 1999, and Krantz said al though it is a good album, the ma terial is dated with highly experimental improvisation. “I feel that, at this point, I’ve gone as far in that direction as I’m going to go,” he said. Though he and his band still rely heavily on improvisation, Krantz said they have been writing more coherent songs, which is mostly what they will play on Saturday. Another aspect of “Greenwich Mean” that Krantz said was unchar acteristic was the amount of solo guitar improvisation. All 21 tracks feature Krantz and leave drummer Keith Carlock and bass player Tim Lefebvre to play rhythm. But Krantz said the band members do much more than play backup. “I can’t say enough about them. The concept of this band was not to be ‘Mr. Guitar Player’ up front with an anonymous bass and drummer in the back,” he said. Krantz has been with Lefebvre and Carlock for more than three years and said they are “irreplaceable.” Krantz said he has received offers for more steady work if he were to use famous people as sidemen, but he wanted to form a band. “The power of a band is undeni able,” he said. Krantz will share that power Saturday afternoon before the con cert at a workshop offered through the University School of Music. Steve Owen, director of Jazz Stud ies at the University, has been working with Krantz to organize the free workshop from 2 to 4 p.m. in the music building. The loca tion is still undetermined, but signs will be posted in the build ing. Owen said in a good year, the school will have between four and six workshops where musicians will answer questions and share knowledge when they pass through town. “These things usually happen by dumb luck,” Owen said. The small fee the musicians are paid for the workshops comes di rectly from the students of the jazz program. Owen said it is called the “jazz tax.” “(The musicians) are pretty much doing it out of the goodness of their hearts,” Owen said. Krantz said he enjoys doing workshops because “students are cool; they’re interested. “There are always a bunch of questions because nobody knows how we do what we do,” he said. Mason West is the senior Pulse reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald. He can be reached at masonwest@dailyemerald.com. Thriller continued from page 7 A are going for, drawing on their ex perience bringing modern inner city problems to the screen (“Men ace II Society”) and successfully applying it to the equivalent 100 years ago. Viewers have been trained by countless Merchant Ivory and Edith Wharton adapta tions that the 19th century was a time of etiquette, cleanliness and order; “From Hell” tears those per ceptions apart. But the Hughes brothers bring more to the film than violence and gore. Jack the Ripper’s famous quote, “One day, men will look back and say that I gave birth to the 20th century,” is displayed at the beginning and provides the basis for their approach to the material. “From Hell” is most definitely a look from the 20th century back to its beginnings, and the direction lends itself accordingly. During one of the early crime scenes, the action fast-forwards from night into day, with passersby zooming in every direction; as the Ripper makes his escape, he fades into nothingness instead of ducking into a dark comer. Abberline’s hal lucinations also have the quality of similar scenes in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” another film in which Depp explores the wonders of drugs.
