Guitarist Eric Krasno is no stranger to diverse and varied sounds on his myriad of projects, ranging from his stints as a co-founder of two seminal jambands, Lettuce and Soulive, and his numerous production and guest artist work, whether it is for other acts, or those under his large Royal Family Records umbrella. However, in his decade-and-a-half length career, Krasno has never released a solo record. Until now. Coming on the heels of the winning 11-track Beatles’ instrumental cover album, the inspired Rubber Soulive, his debut solo work is a winning collection of songs inspired by, and advanced upon, a foundation of influences which has enriched Kraz’s music since his youth. His artistic development has “happened in a few different plateaus” according to the guitarist/producer/songwriter, and it is evidenced to a very fine degree on Reminisce.
Setup like scenes to a soundtrack to a film yet to be made, the guitarist and his collaborators, including occasional Kraz bandmates Adam Deitch and bassist/keyboardist/vocalist Nigel Hall, keyboardist Neal Evans and drummer Alan Evans (indeed, Evans also mixed the album), Lettuce horn player Ryan Zoidis, and sax/flutist Cochemea Gastelum to help the musician realize a fully-formed visionary statement. Krasno is current working in both of his longtime bands, and a new outfit, Chapter 2, which includes the core team from Reminisce, as well as producing several projects, and appearing as a guest musician on upcoming releases like the new Derek Trucks/Susan Tedeschi collaboration. One wonders when the man sleeps as does Kraz himself as Jambands.com sits down with the talented musician on the eve of a New York charity gig for Paul Newman’s Hole in the Wall Gang Camp, a special place where children with illnesses—life threatening, or otherwise—can enjoy the great camp experience for free.
RR: When was the decision made to create a solo project, and how did you gather the players necessary to execute it, eventually becoming a band called Chapter 2?
EK: I guess it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do. This project is interesting because it’s kind of taken a journey itself. (laughs) When I first started, I was writing a lot of lyrics, and writing a lot of songs. I wanted to do an album, and it’s kind of like a hybrid of that with a few instrumentals. I went into the studio, and originally recorded a bunch of stuff with Adam Deitch [drums] and Stu Brooks [bass]. He is in Dub Trio, and later became the bass player with Matisyahu, so he became really busy after the sessions.
I had been looking for the right singer. I sang on some of the tunes, and, well, live, I really wanted a great singer for this group, and Ryan Zoidis introduced me to Nigel Hall, who had been living up in Portland, Maine, and mostly singing up there. I called him, and he came down to record some of this stuff. I heard him sing, and I said, “Man—these songs are yours.” (laughter)
Then, the project split into two. We said, “Some of these tunes are going to go on Nigel’s album.” O.K.—I’m giving you the short version. (laughs) Over months of time we said, “Nigel needs to make a record. We’re starting a record label [Royal Family Records]. Let’s make him our first artist outside of the bands that we already have going.” That’s when I took more of the instrumentals—my record is going to be more about the guitar, more instrumentals, have a couple of vocal tunes on there, and it split into two projects. Since then, we’ve been working on Nigel’s record. As my record, also, came together, I met Louis Cato, who is a bass player. He played on the last few tracks. There are a few with Stu Brooks, and I played bass on a few before Louis came into the picture. When we finished my album, I said, “This is one thing, and now we’re working on Nigel’s record.”
The last piece of the puzzle is now that that band, Chapter 2, has been playing around, now, we want to make a record, too. (laughs) It has a rock-kind of sound. We’ve been writing a lot of stuff with that band, and writing some more lyrics. Really, (laughs) it started out as one thing, and three different projects sprung out of it.
But it was cool because my record was recorded over a few years; although, very sporadically. When I wasn’t on tour, I’d say, “O.K.—let’s get back to this album here. How do I want it to sound?” The reason I called it Reminisce at the very end after I thought of that end because it was like going through a journey of different sounds. You can hear throughout the album that I am inspired by so many guitar players, or just different sounds, and different styles that I grew up around from Jeff Beck to Hendrix to George Benson to anywhere in between.
RR: I’m glad you brought that up. You’ve been at this for a while, and the new album celebrates your skills as a musician and your influences. What was some of the music that kicked you in the ass, and told you “this is what I want to do”?
EK: It happened in a few different plateaus. When I was a kid, Hendrix was huge. Hendrix and Led Zeppelin is what made me really want to pick up the guitar. I guess the first thing really was Led Zeppelin. Hearing that stuff just had a huge impact on me. My brother is a guitarist, he’s older by about 5, 6 years, and he had a band, so they were playing, and I always wanted to be hanging out. My dad used to jam with his friends. Really, it was like a social thing. I wanted to play was what it was. (laughs) They didn’t want me to play at first. They’d say, “O.K., go practice, and when you come back, we’ll let you play.” That was my inspiration.
Back to the music. It was Zeppelin and Hendrix, and my dad was a big Rolling Stones and Beatles fan. Over time, I got into jazz—like Herbie Hancock. The Headhunters blew my mind. That’s when I really got into funk jazz. Obviously, James Brown—I used to cop all the guitar parts from that, and that was just a huge part of it. I had a long section of it when I listened to Grant Green and Wes Montgomery in high school. That turned on a whole different side of my brain when I heard that stuff. Wow—these guys had so much soul, so much pocket, and such a huge vocabulary to play over all these chord changes. I always wanted to try to combine all that together in some way. I guess I’m still on that journey. (laughs)
RR: What is interesting, and the reason I asked that question, is that many guitarists are not able to define their sound in even one group. Yet, over time, you’ve been able to forge your own path in multiple projects. Let me take a broad stroke. What is different about your work with Lettuce, Soulive, and Chapter 2?
EK: Well, I think that Soulive was really interesting because I had never played that role. I was playing my Strat, playing more rock-based, or funk rock kind of music, and when I met them, I had listened to a lot of that music, but I had never been the guy playing it. I picked up a hollow body, really for the first time, and started playing that music, and I loved it. It was so cool to be able to do it. I wasn’t totally confident right off the bat with it. Actually, I was confident, but I wouldn’t say I was a master of it. (laughs) So I loved doing it, but I also, as time went on, with Soulive, I started incorporating the effects, the wah wah pedal, and the other stuff that I’d grown up doing.
I think with Lettuce, all that James Brown stuff, all that rhythm stuff that I was listening to, came out. It was really all about the pulse and the horns and about locking in and finding your place in this band where there’s so many different percussive things going on, and you want to just find your spot, and just nail it. I think that’s kind of a whole different side of things, too. Although, I try to do that with Soulive, as well. I’m covering such a large spectrum of sound because there are only three of us. Whereas, Lettuce is just this huge, massive train rolling. (laughs) You just gotta find your little spot and work it, and when it’s time for you to step out, you get out and do a solo, or whatever you’re going to do.
With Chapter 2, I think the guitar is the main thing. I’m doing the rhythm, I’m doing the leads, I’m doing the melodies—it’s all of that. And the other thing with Chapter 2 is that I’m writing a lot of the stuff, and writing a lot of lyrics. Even though there are only a couple of vocal tunes, with Chapter 2 live, you’ll hear a lot of the other songs that I’ve written with Nigel and the stuff Adam and I have written together. With Chapter 2, the writing covers a lot more stylistically. We’ll do a soul tune. We’ll do a rock tune in 7 (laughs). I’ll play slide on a tune. I’d say it’s a little bit more all over the place. The one thing keeping it together is my guitar and Nigel’s voice are present throughout.
RR: Well, your solo album, Reminisce also seems like an accumulation of all of your work, and where you are at now.
EK: Exactly. (laughs) That’s a good way to put it.
RR: A few years back, 2005 through 2007, there was more of an emphasis on vocal-oriented songs in your work with Soulive. You veered back into more instrumentals after that, and now, it appears like you are combining both approaches.
EK: Exactly. Well, you know what? I think I realized that when you are in a band for a long time, you want to branch out, and do different things. What we’ve allowed ourselves to do, especially with starting this label, is, rather than change the sound of each project, let’s just start new ones. (laughs) I think we’ve learned from that. I loved the record that we made with Toussaint [on 2007’s No Place Like Soul ], but I think it threw people off because Soulive has a very distinct sound that I love, you know, but I think now that we have other avenues like Neal [Evans, keyboards] is making a solo record, and Alan [Evans, drums] has his own studio where he records and produces all sorts of people…I had written a lot of vocal tunes which ended up on that record with Toussaint, and now that I’m also working with Nigel, and also producing a lot of other people, I have more outlets to do that kind of stuff.
I think that we’re in a really solid place now with having our own label and able to just branch out. As a musician, when you’re playing with the same people all the time, you just want to be able to try something different, especially when you grow up with so many influences like we have. We listen to so much different…when we’re driving around in the bus or van, it’ll go from Béla Fleck to Black Sabbath (laughs) to Lee “Scratch” Perry to Wes Montgomery. We’re all over the place as far as our musical tastes, so we like to mess around with that, especially since we have our own studios, and so many musicians to play with. We like to keep the boundaries open.
RR: Speaking of…let’s talk about the Beatles and Hendrix. Beyond the new Rubber Soulive album, there are two covers on Reminisce from those legendary artists—“Get Back” and “Manic Depression.”
EK: The Hendrix track—I’ve worked with Adam Deitch since high school. We produce a lot together, we play together all the time, we’ve lived down the street from each other, and he turned me on to a lot of Tower of Power, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and all of this funk stuff that we heard growing up. And I kept trying to get him into Hendrix. For a while, he wasn’t that into it. It took him a while. When he came around, he goes, “Dude, we’ve gotta do this version of this tune,” and he came up with that arrangement of “Manic Depression.” He said, “We’ll do it like this, with this groove” and I said, “Yeah!” I was super psyched about it. That was really his idea to do that one, and I was the one that said, “We’ve got to put it on the album.” He said, “Let’s jam on this,” and I said, “No, we’ve got to record this.”
“Get Back”—I had been wanting to do Beatles instrumentals for a long time. I had mentioned it with Soulive a few times. When we came to doing my record, we were in the studio and I think Deitch said, “Let’s do that “Get Back” thing.” We had jammed on that before. We were in the studio, and just spontaneously said, “Let’s try that.” Louis was there on bass, and Louis really setup that groove. That version—he just killed the bass on that. When we were playing (laughs), we were trying not to scream into the mikes because he was just killing it on bass. When everyone heard that, we all said, “We’ve got to do that Beatles idea.” So, a few months later, Soulive ended up recording a whole album of Beatles instrumentals [ Rubber Soulive ]. That idea has been thrown around for five, six years. I guess once we recorded “Get Back,” we started planning on some other ones, and that’s what sparked the whole thing. Ryan Zoidis happened to be driving through Massachusetts, and I made him come by. (laughs) He played the horn solo on that. Actually, Louis Cato, who played bass on it, also played trombone on the track [and tambourine, too, for good measure]. He is also an amazing drummer, too. Louis Cato plays just about every instrument there is.
RR: The horn work, in general, is very tastefully recorded on Reminisce.
EK: Yeah, I love horns. I actually had to hold myself back by putting horns on.
RR: There you go.
EK: (laughter) Had to be different from Lettuce. I’m trying to make everything unique in its way. You have a lot of the same musicians playing on a lot of the records. Otherwise, I would have gone nuts. But, yeah, I love horns. If you listen to the stuff we produce for other people, there are horns on a lot of it. We work with amazing horn players—Sam Kininger and Ryan Zoidis, Cochemea [Gastelum] played on [ Reminisce ], and plays with the Dap Kings, Antibalas, and used to play with Robert Walter—that’s where I met him. He plays flute and tenor [saxophone] on the first track [“Roll Out”], and he’s also on another track called “Domino,” which is a bonus track for Japan’s version. He’s amazing. He’s got so much pocket and so much soul.
RR: He’s got a great new record out, too- The Electric Sound of Johnny Arrow.
EK: Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I need that. I’ve heard that just from his iPod. (laughs) I need to get a copy. I love his playing. He played on a bunch of tracks on Neal’s album, too, which came out really great.
RR: So you were aware of not repeating yourself with excessive horn work?
EK: Yeah. It wasn’t something that I thought about a lot, but, at the very end, I was hearing horns on so many different songs that I was listening to, that I thought, “O.K.—I’m just going to pick this one and that one.” And then, I brought in Cochemea. Actually, when Zoidis—the only reason “Get Back” has horns on it was because he was literally driving by as he was going through to Maine, going home from another gig with Rustic Overtones or something. I said, “Just come by.” But I liked how it worked out for those couple tunes.
RR: “Enhorabuena” is a beautiful instrumental featuring a classic quartet setup: you’re on guitar, Nigel Hall is on organ and clavinet, Cato, bass, and Deitch, drums.
EK: That one you can tell is my tribute to Santana. My dad is a huge Santana fan. I grew up listening to that shit a lot. [Enhorabuena] means congratulations. It’s just one that I came up with at my house when I was just coming up with some melodies. Originally, it was more like hip-hop, a Latin hip-hop thing. As we started recording it, it took on more of a samba kind of feel. That one really came to life with the band. I do a lot of my music at home where I’ll record it into Pro Tools, and I’ll do everything myself and play all the instruments. This one, the band took it to a whole other place, which I really dug. I said, “This is the chords, this is the melody, let’s just see where this goes.” Nigel and Louis added a bunch of stuff that made the song come together in a whole new way. It’s one for the ladies. My girlfriend loves that song. For a while, I was like “is it a little too smooth for the other tracks?” She’d say “NO. It’s my favorite track.” So, yeah—a lot of people dig that one, which is funny because at times, I thought it was a little bit too cheesy. I actually like it. The only thing that I wanted to do with it is that now that I’ve played it a few times with Kofi Burbridge, and he’s played flute so beautifully on it, that I almost wanted to re-do it, and put him on it. But, we’ll have to do a live version now.
RR: I’m old school, album-oriented, so I like how that ends Side 1 of Reminisce, and then Side 2 kicks in with “Tilt.”
EK: Yeah, that is true. I think that’s why I put it there in the sequence: “O.K.—we need a break, and then a reset.” Yeah, right, like end, and then start again. I do want to put the album on vinyl, and I hope that I do that before it’s too late. It’s so expensive to make vinyl. You’ve got to hope that people buy it. I guess I could make a really short run for myself and all the hardcore people that would buy it. (laughs)
RR: Let’s talk about the story of the album itself. The last track is the title track, or, as labeled here, “Reminisce (End of the Movie).” Were you trying to tell a story through the music?
EK: Yeah. I didn’t really make it chronological as far as how it was created, but then, in the end, once I had all of the scenes (laughs) finished, I did try to fit it together so it had a story, an arc to it. I always knew that was going to be the last track. In fact, that song was probably the first song that I recorded for what would be this album. That one, I did play all the stuff, but, eventually, I did have Adam add a drum track. Originally, there was just percussion, which I played in my apartment when I did that song “End of the Movie.” I went back and thought, “O.K.—this needs real drums like the rest of the album.” (laughs) It’s funny that that’s the last track because that was the first track made.
RR: Lest I forget, bassist Stu Brooks is another fine contributor on several tracks.
EK: Stu is the master of tone. I love his playing. He knows all the right spots to play in—just rhythmically always in the pocket. He has a lot of different styles, too. He’s obviously a great reggae and dub player with Dub Trio. He’s one of the coolest guys ever, too. We went to Berklee [School of Music] together. We’ve been playing together for a long time, a long time. He’s awesome. He’s always on tour the last couple of years, and that’s the only reason that I haven’t played with him live as much as I want to. He
was a major part of [ Reminisce ]. A couple of the tracks that we recorded in those sessions that he’s on are going to end up on other projects, too, so, you’ll be hearing other tracks with me and Stu together soon.
RR: You’re involved either producing or performing with a lot of acts in your Royal Family Records’ stable. In fact, you have numerous dates with several bands coming up in the next few months. How do you prepare for those dates, and how do you keep your head together during all of these various projects?
EK: (laughter) Head together—I’m not sure if that actually happens. I’m just kidding. We try to have as many rehearsals as possible, but it’s hard. People live in different places. It’s all about in that off time, finding time to, first of all, relax, and then find the time to go through some of the music, think it out, and spend some time practicing, which I just started doing again.
Before it was like…you get so lost. You’re just trying to get product. I’m either producing or recording or writing. Lately, I’ve been trying to set aside time to practice: “there’s some different ways I could interpret this song.”
It changes as time goes on. It’s a learning process. I’ve been touring for about 11 years now, and I’m just figuring out the best way to do it. The great thing is that I don’t get bored with what I’m doing. (laughs) I love playing with different people and playing different music. It inspires me, and makes me excited because when the band is excited on stage those are the best moments. Lettuce just played this past weekend at Mountain Jam, and we hadn’t played together in a while. We did two sets, so we had to breakout a lot of music that we hadn’t played. We did a daytime set, and then we did a late night extended set. It made us break into all of these songs that we hadn’t played. Not that it was the tightest of tightest of sets, but the vibe was amazing. We were digging into these grooves, and interpreting songs in different ways. It was great, even though, sure, we might have been tighter at the end of a six-week tour, but there was something about the freshness of the music we hadn’t played in a while, like playing brand new music, which brings out that vibe.
RR: What other projects do you have coming up?
EK: I’m producing a lot of stuff. I’m writing and producing a lot of stuff for other artists.
We’re trying to do more and more of that. Also, get into the studio with some different people. Adam and I went down and worked with Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, and did a bunch of writing for their upcoming album, so I’m looking forward to hear how that comes out. We’re mixing Nigel Hall’s album, and doing the finishing touches on that. I’ve been producing that for a couple of years now, so that’s going to be a nice one to finish. It’s like giving birth on that one. (laughs) Lastly, I’m working on an acoustic project by myself. I might sing a little bit on that stuff. I’ve been writing for that, but, also, some acoustic instrumental stuff, so I’m looking forward to getting that together. I’ve been chipping away at that, and slowly putting some arrangements together. (laughs) It’s kind of a lot. I’ll try to find some time to get some sleep in between all that.
