Just got this in the mail today...



...Signals (1990)


Wanye who?


Some may remember his stint with Steely Dan...



...on their Art Crimes '96 Tour
(which also included Ricky Lawson on drums and the late Cornelius Bumpus on sax )

Quotes from a 2001 interview...

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 instrument that music has become a second 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 appeal to as many people as possible without compromising your music," 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 anyone "who comes to Taylor's even knows who Steely Dan is."

For whatever reason the audience comes to his shows, once a person arrives, he said "they're in our hands."

"On a tour in England, a substantial 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."

Krantz said his music is "pretty open-ear" and is based almost entirely 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.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

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 uncharacteristic 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 undeniable," he said.

http://media.www.dailyeme...5167.shtml
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Guitarist Mike Stern had a very famous Monday/Wednesday residency at The 55 Bar in Greenwich Village.
Another cat that held down a regular spot there...



...was Wayne Krantz.

What stuck me about the Bar 55 gig was that on paper, this gig should not work. The music is virtually completely improvised, the tunes are unfamiliar, even the harmony is (apparently deliberately) outside most peoples ability to perceive what is actually going on. Yet with all this, the audience was totally with the band, excited by it and seemingly onboard. How do you explain this?

WK: I started using this approach with my bands in '97 or '98 because it was where the action was for me at the time musically. I had been composing heavily for the band and wanted something more immediate and less classical. It was always my goal to keep the audience engaged. Despite the sometimes challenging nature of the music and the business model I use, I don't crave obscurity at all. I develop the music and the bands using my aesthetic and the audience response as a guide. As I go, I learn more and more about how to make this "Music Impossible" thing I'm into work better.


Perhaps learning to develop a more dissonant style necessarily requires a gig like Bar 55 for the player to regularly test on an audience what works and what doesn't? To build a common language or bridge with which to communicate.

WK: There is no gig like the 55, unfortunately. That situation is unique, and if any kind of music required that to exist, then it wouldn't. I can say that it's been very useful for me to play there every week. Not as useful as playing on the road say, 200 nights a year or even 100, as some do, but useful just the same. As for dissonance...I mean, we take from jazz and classical sounds as much as the funk and rock sounds, but we release all that tension/dissonance, all the time. That's what packs the place.

Over the years you have been playing Bar 55, how has your playing developed/changed?

WK: It's gotten better, at least it sounds like it to me. And I've gone through a lot of phases and changes. But it's kind of boring for me to talk about it, frankly.

http://www.btinternet.com...Krantz.htm
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You also may have heard him on Donald Fagen's Morph The Cat...



...and subsequent tour.


Other gigs include Billy Cobham, Michael Brecker, Carla Bley, Tania Maria, Victor Bailey, Steps Ahead, Leni Stern, etc.


More Krantz on disc...





Long To Be Loose (1993)
2 Drink Minimum (1995)
Separate Cages (1996) w/Leni Stern
Greenwich Mean (1997)
Your Basic Live (2002)


He also has a method book that i've just ordered called An Improviser's OS.

Regarding your book "An improviser's OS". The book gives an insight into the detail in which you have researched your particular musical philosophy. For someone who has spent a lifetime struggling with the diatonic world, can you offer any solace to anyone starting this program on what would seem to require yet another whole lifetime to accomplish?

WK: In contemporary language, diatonic means "of a tonality". So the book is really all about the diatonic world - not just the sounds we're familiar with, but all of the sounds possible within the chromatic scale, the Mother of All Scales here in the West. In terms of accomplishing things...well, learning and using even 1 new sound in one's playing would be an accomplishment, and could take only minutes or even seconds to achieve. On the other hand, one could spend a lifetime trying to get to the bottom of the major scale, unsuccessfully. All this stuff is relative, there never is an end to what can be done with music or any art, and that's what can be appealing and discouraging about taking part in it.

Some of the formulas that you suggest have more than eight notes. When practicing these formulas, I'm struggling with the fact that I can't actually hear this harmony in my head and so my fingers end up do the talking. How much of the development in the book requires developing ones ear beforehand? (I base this question on my assumption that most practiced guitarists can hear pentatonic harmony, fewer can hear modal harmony, and fewer still can hear twelve-tone harmony!).

WK: It's a struggle in the beginning because the sounds are new. A valuable thing about theory, about using one's head with the music, is that new sounds can be introduced to the ear and eventually become familiar to it. Though that can take some time, this book outlines a pretty effective way to maximize the process musically. As long as patterns aren't being used, the ear is what's organizing those unfamiliar notes, making sense of them as best it can and keeping it alive for the listener. It's an expansive approach, where consolidation isn't the goal, but just one result.

http://www.btinternet.com...Krantz.htm





tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

There's a 55 Bar gig tonight (2/15)...



Paul Socolow - bass
Keith Carlock - drums


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

I may have to check this out

....

paligap said:

You know why.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

theAudience said:

Hopefully he won't be on the road with Steely Dan next time we fall through NYC,



...

paligap said:

When I was planning to go to NYC last year, one of the first things I did was check the 55 Bar schedule to see if he or Mike Stern would be there.

Unfortunately, neither of them were.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

That "2 Drink Minimum" is a great record! He plays great with a trio, something not many guitarists do.

...

Check Wayne out here, first with Leni Stern, and also with his trio:



http://www.youtube.com/wa...ed&search=


http://www.youtube.com/wa...ed&search=


http://www.youtube.com/wa...ed&search=


...
[Edited 2/15/07 14:40pm]

paligap said:

Leni has got such a creamy Strat tone.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

tA, thanks.

As always.

disgusting!


I would love to hear this live in the same room

see you just made my day and killed it at the same time, this stuff is intimidating, damn!






but I dig the hell out of it!

theAudience said:

and so do I.....now!

...

Hey, tA, did I give you a copy of Greenwich Mean, or Your Basic Live?
I'm guessing you've already copped Long To Be Loose...




Long To Be Loose is more along the lines of his first album, Signals. The other two albums are completely improvised recordings -- nothing was written out before hand--pretty Kool, under the circumstances...


I'm gonna catch that boy live one day,





...
[Edited 2/21/07 13:51pm]

Meloh9 said:

Think of it as inspiration.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

paligap said:

All are in the wishlist. You know I gotta read the liner notes and thangs.
I pull the trigger about every 2 weeks so I don't end up in the poor house.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

Let's BUMP this thread. Wow, t/A, expanding my mind again, thanks. I've got to buy this stuff now because this is just AMAZING. Great youtube links too, just unfuckinbelievable.

Got to go woodshed

Slave2daGroove said:

Don't we all.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

People, take tA's word of advice.....'Signals' is amazing!!!


go get it!