Gary Lucas
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Gary Lucas is an American guitarist, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, an international recording artist with over a dozen solo albums to date, and a soundtrack composer for film and television. Often cited for his innovative and challenging guitar playing and composing, he has been described variously as "one of the best and most original guitarists in America" (David Fricke, 16 Nov. 2006, Rolling Stone); a “legendary leftfield guitarist” (The Guardian, 24 Dec. 2005); "the thinking man's guitar hero" (The New Yorker, 8 Jan. 2007), and one of “the most innovative and challenging guitarists playing today” (fRoots, March 2002). These commendations hint at the depth and extremely broad range of Lucas's musicianship, which encompasses classical, folk, rock, blues and avant-garde sensibilities.
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[edit] Gary Lucas & Gods and Monsters
Gary Lucas tours the world both solo and with several different ensembles, including his longtime band NYC-based group, Gods and Monsters, whose ranks once included singer Jeff Buckley — a psychedelic rock band based around Lucas's guitar playing and songwriting. The most recent Gods and Monsters album, Coming Clean, was released in Russia in summer of 2005 by Exotica Music and to the rest of the world in fall, 2006 (in the U.K. by Universal-distributed label Side Salad), with mixes by Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads) and vocal contributions from David Johansen (New York Dolls), sultry French singer Elli Medeiros, Richard Barone (The Bongos), and others. It is available in four versions(in Russia under the name 'Follow' through Exotica Music, in France through Productions Speciales, in the UK through Side Salad/Universal, and in the United States, Japan and Canada through Mighty Quinn Records.
Gary Lucas & Gods and Monsters recently contributed a song to Light of Day, a Bruce Springsteen tribute album for charity, and Springsteen himself has hailed Lucas as “a phenomenal guitarist”. In 2003, Lucas released a compilation of the best of his early band and solo work entitled Operators Are Standing By. The 4-star review by Mojo UK cited Lucas's “psychedelic" roots, and its appeal to the "post-modern set” (10/2003).
Along the same lines, David Fricke's description of the band as “a 21st century Cream” (Rolling Stone) points to a sensibility (albeit post-modern with underground influences) that it shares with that earlier, legendary psychedelic blues band. Besides Gary Lucas on guitars and vocals, Gods and Monsters features Ernie Brooks (Modern Lovers) on bass, Billy Ficca (Television) on drums, and Jason Candler (Hungry March Band) on alto sax. Other critical reviews often use psychedelic or "underground" terms as descriptors; Time Out New York (Feb. 1999) wrote: ”The trio is still mind blowing!”--while The New Yorker called them “An underground-rock fan’s dream team.”
Gary Lucas & Gods and Monsters recently completed a tour of Moscow and Saint Petersburg Russia in the company of former Talking Heads keyboardist / hit producer Jerry Harrison, who is now a member of the band, and who produced their most recent album.
"Coming Clean," the most recent Gary Lucas & Gods and Monsters album, was released in Russia in Summer 2006 by Exotica Music under the title "Follow," and revamped and remixed, was released in Fall 2006 on the indie label Mighty Quinn for the U.S., Canada and Japan, in slightly different versions in the U.K. through Side Salad/Universal, and in France through Productions Speciales. The album to date has received 4 star reviews in Mojo, Uncut, Record Collector, and France's Crossroads.
[edit] "Beefheart University"
Gary Lucas established his reputation with five years spent playing with his childhood hero, the visionary vocalist, composer, and bandleader Captain Beefheart (alias Don Van Vliet). Long an admirer of Captain Beefheart's music, he joined the last incarnation of Beefheart's Magic Band, distinguishing himself as an interpreter of Beefheart's difficult music and recording solo guitar pieces on Doc at the Radar Station and Ice Cream for Crow (1982), which featured his explosive solo renditions of Don Van Vliet’s twisted instrumental compositions, "Flavor Bud Living" and "Evening Bell." Of the latter, Esquire wrote "Gary Lucas apparently grew extra fingers in order to negotiate his way through it". These recordings put Lucas on the musical map and laid the groundwork for his subsequent career.
Lucas co-leads a jazz-oriented, all instrumental Beefheart tribute ensemble, Fast 'n' Bulbous, who made appearances at the Frankfurt Jazz Festival and the Jazz Em Agosto Festival in Lisbon during 2006. Their debut album Pork Chop Blue Around the Rind has received favorable praise worldwide, was profiled on NPR, and charted on college radio in the US. In Fall, 2006, they toured Europe extensively, selling out shows at the London Jazz Festival, in Amsterdam's BimHuis, as well as playing in Bern, Vienna, Schwaz and Llubljana Slovenia.
On the liner notes to Pork Chop Blue Around the Rind, Lucas writes, "I feel that Van Vliet's sensibility and aesthetic definitely informs my guitar playing and overall worldview -- it's like I went to Beefheart University." Lucas actually graduated from Yale University in 1974, where he was a DJ and served as Music Director at WYBC FM.
Lucas is a member of the ongoing reunion of Captain Beefheart alumni The Magic Band, and has played at the UK’s famed Glastonbury Festival, at London’s Shepherd's Bush Empire and at the All Tomorrow's Parties festival in LA and Camber Sands in the UK. They’ve made several extensive UK and European tours, and a new live double album and DVD, 21st Century Mirror Men, was released this year as a follow-up to their debut album Back to the Front which was chosen as one of the best albums of 2004 by The Wire.
[edit] First solo guitar show
In 1988, Lucas mounted his first solo guitar show at New York's downtown mecca for avant-garde and alternative music, the Knitting Factory. The club became the launching pad for Lucas's ensuing European success, as he was invited shortly after his first Knitting Factory gig to appear at the prestigious 1988 JazzFest Berlin, where the Berliner Morgenpost raved in a banner headline after his performance, "It is Lucas!”
[edit] Concerts and tours
To date Lucas has performed in twenty countries around the world, from Tokyo to Trieste to Tel Aviv. His Australian debut was made in the company of UK electronica band Future Sound of London, and Lucas has been a regular visitor to London's Royal Festival Hall (five separate appearances) and Amsterdam's famed Paradiso (17 separate appearances since 1980).
He recently returned from his fourth tour of Russia, where he performed his original solo guitar score accompanying the silent classic German horror film The Golem (1920) in Moscow and Saint Petersburg and appeared on national TV before an estimated 50 million viewers, as well as being feted in the Russian edition of Rolling Stone. He’s played with The Golem all over the world since debuting his live score in 1989 at the BAM Next Wave Festival—including performing at the Venice Biennale, London’s Royal Festival Hall, the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center, as part of a week long artist-in-residency at the Quebec City Summer Festival, at the Alien artist H. R. Giger’s Retrospective in Prague (home of the Golem) this spring, at Atlanta’s Dragon Con, the largest science fiction festival in the world, and at this year's fifth annual Pop Montreal music and film festival.
Other recent concert appearances include a specially commissioned concert at the Czech Embassy in Washington DC by invitation of the Czech ambassador to the US spotlighting Lucas's solo guitar arrangements of Czech classical music in honor of the 14th anniversary of the Czech Velvet Revolution (Lucas is of Bohemian descent on his father’s side). Lucas made an extensive solo acoustic tour of Spain last year, which generated large audiences and raves in the national press there.
[edit] "Fast 'N Bulbous"-Tour
In November 2006, Lucas toured Europe with Phillip Johnston and five other jazz musicians as the "Gary Lucas and Phillip Johnston Septet". The group performed jazz arrangements of Captain Beefheart's work in London, Amsterdam, Bern, Vienna, Schwaz (Austria) and Ljubljana.
[edit] Projects and collaborations
Lucas has played and collaborated with Leonard Bernstein, Captain Beefheart, Jeff Buckley, Chris Cornell, Lou Reed, John Cale, Nick Cave, David Johansen, jazz greats Roswell Rudd, Steve Swallow, Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman, and Billy Bang; Mary Margaret O’Hara, John Zorn, Peter Stampfel, Patti Smith, Claudia Brucken (Propaganda), Paul Humphreys (OMD), Future Sound of London, Joan Osborne (Lucas co-wrote her Grammy-nominated song "Spider Web" from her triple platinum album Relish), Matthew Sweet, Iggy Pop, Van Dyke Parks, Adrian Sherwood, Bryan Ferry, Richard Barone, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Bob Neuwirth, Geoff Muldaur, John Sebastian, Allen Ginsberg, DJ Spooky, Damo Suzuki, Dr. John, Graham Parker, Bob Weir, Fred Schneider (B-52s), Warren Haynes (Allman Brothers, Gov't Mule) and many others. Some of these collaborations can be heard on his recent 20-year rarities retrospective album Improve the Shining Hour which also features his film and TV music for ABC News (he has scored documentaries for the shows 20/20 and Turning Point). He’s produced albums for downtown composer/saxophonists Tim Berne and Peter Gordon, and for the French avant-rock band Tanger.
[edit] Gary Lucas and Jeff Buckley
Lucas co-wrote two of Jeff Buckley’s most famous hits, Grace and Mojo Pin, from Buckley's million-selling album Grace (which Mojo named the #1 Modern Classic Album in their March 2006 issue). Their early collaborations can also be heard on the recent Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas album Songs To No One, which charted internationally with worldwide sales approaching 100,000. The original music for both songs, written by Gary Lucas (before Jeff Buckley penned the lyrics), can be heard on Lucas's CD, Level the Playing Field (Last Call Records, 2000).
[edit] The Edge of Heaven
Gary Lucas's work draws strongly from the blues tradition, but it has international range. Even The Edge of Heaven, an album of Lucas's lush arrangements of classic Chinese pop tunes from the 1930s, has a distinctly bluesy feel. It received positive international reviews from Rolling Stone to The Wall Street Journal to the Hong Kong Music Weekly. It was #1 on the World Music Charts in Canada and garnered international attention, England's Q magazine awarding it 4 Stars, and Mojo writing: "It is simply gorgeous." The album was chosen as one of the Best Discs of the year in France’s Libération newspaper. There was a lengthy profile for the album in The Wall Street Journal, as well as an NPR interview. The title song from the album was featured on the soundtrack to the Bill Moyers PBS Series Becoming American: The Chinese Experience.
[edit] Lectures and master classes
Lucas has lectured on his life and career, the mechanics of songwriting, extensive collaborations, composing for film, and the music business at the Amsterdam Music Conservatorum, Yale University (his alma mater), the University of Hawaii, New York University, and Columbia University. He has given guitar master classes at the Amsterdam Music Conservatory and in Honolulu at the University of Hawaii. In Spring 2007, he is slated to lecture at Rogers State University in Oklahoma, and McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
[edit] Composing for film and television
Recent soundtrack work includes an original score for Trust Me, a Showtime documentary about a summer camp for Christian, Muslim and Jewish children, and a score for the award-winning documentary Bed and Breakfast 9/11, which was shown on PBS in September. He scored the new documentary by Slawomir Grunberg The Legacy of Jedwabne. This year he released his second album with Dutch lutist Jozef Van Wissem, The Universe of Absence, and the pair recently performed live on Dutch national tv network VPRO show, "Free Sounds." Lucas recently scored the Oscar-nominated Maysles Films documentary Lalee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton for HBO, which screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York as part of their Maysles Films 50 Year Retrospective, and about which Variety wrote: "Gary Lucas' Delta blues guitar music adds vivid color to this report from America's forgotten underbelly." He is also working with the female UK-based DJ Cosmo on a new dance-oriented project called Wild Rumpus, a track from which parts have been previewed already on the BBC. Gary has been performing dj improv sets with Cosmo in a variety of far-flung locales, including high profile gigs in Romania and India.
In the last few years Lucas has been profiled in the International Herald Tribune, Libération, and featured on the cover of The Forward as well as the national Dutch newspaper Het Parool.
Gary Lucas makes his home in New York City.
