Marshall Crenshaw first came onto the scene in 1981 with the release of his first single, “Something’s Gonna Happen.” And it did. Crenshaw’s career took off, and escalated exponentially quite rapidly with the release of his self-titled debut album in 1982, and the equally sublime Field Day in 1983. Since then, Crenshaw has come back down to earth in terms of his career, eventually leaving major record labels, and recording a series of independently-released albums, albeit always continuing to validate his artistic credibility. After 30 years, the one constant in Crenshaw’s career is that the man writes built-to-last classic melodies, which have their home in the roots of the past, but always with an eye for a timeless future, or a style he helped create and name, “retro futurism.”
Jambands.com caught up with the artist en route to his first rehearsal with Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, who will accompany Crenshaw for three shows in New York later this month. Crenshaw is a plain-spoken man who doesn’t dodge either the self-reflective criticism, or his opinion of his lasting mark on a musical culture, which has seen its fair share of change and evolution over the years, but not without finding a home for someone of the singer/guitarist’s caliber. Indeed, Crenshaw’s music can still evoke memories of a more innocent, romantic, and sincere time, but what is so refreshing is that they are all qualities that he has seduced with an instinctual knowledge, rather than some affected posture like so many of his other peers seeking critical and commercial validity.
RR: You’re playing a series of gigs at New York’s City Winery at the end of April, which celebrates the 30th anniversary of your first single, “Something’s Gonna Happen.” Included in your band is the esteemed guitarist, Ira Kaplan from Yo La Tengo. How did you select that venue and the musicians to play these special dates?
MC: The City Winery has turned into my clubhouse. I think of it that way. I play there a lot now, and I’ve had a good turnout at all of those shows. I used to play at the Bottom Line all the time, and most always had the place full whenever I played there. But the other cool thing about it was that I could just walk to the front door any time I wanted, and say, “Here I am,” and they would bring me in and put me at a table. Whenever I would go there, I would run into friends of mine, and it would be like a really nice social experience. When the Bottom Line closed down, I was at sea for a while in New York with no particular fixed address. But now the City Winery…it’s like the theme song from Cheers plays in my head whenever I walk into that place. I mean I think of it that way; it’s a very friendly spot for me, now. I’ve played there a bunch in the last couple years, so it was the right place for me to do this.
As far as who is in the band, my brother, [drummer Robert Crenshaw] is going to be there for a couple of nights. I don’t think he’ll be there for all three shows. They are actually talking to me now about possibly adding a fourth, but I’m not sure I want to do it. Robert will be with us on Friday and Saturday. Graham Maby is the bass player. He started playing with us back in 1987, and that is a situation that has continued right up
until now. Graham is a great friend. He’s not just a friend of mine, but he’s also a friend of my family. Like if he is down in Dallas, Texas with Joe Jackson, or somebody, he’ll call my brother, Mitchell, and invite him and his wife to the show. He’s friendly with my parents. He’s almost like a family member. That may be a slight exaggeration, but Graham is just somebody that we’re just very close with, so he’s the right guy for that.
[Graham] recommended a drummer who he has worked with lately who he thinks is really special, and this guy’s name is Josh Dion, so he’s going to be there. My brother’s going to play also, and the first couple of nights, it’s going to be two drummers—my brother John on percussion, and myself on guitar, and Ira from Yo La Tengo on guitar. Ira is going to be there for all the shows.
RR: I love the combination of players because you’ve got a mixture from different eras—Graham Maby dates back to the Mary Jean & Nine Others era of your career, your brother is your original drummer, and, of course, there is Ira Kaplan, who is new to your band for these series of dates. What is your connection with Ira?
MC: Well, this will be the first time we’ve played together. I have become a really big fan of Yo La Tengo over the last five or six years. I love him, in fact, and I was trying to think of someone who could fill out the band, someone who could come in there and add some spice to the whole thing, and I just thought of him. I’m on my way to the first rehearsal with him, so I don’t know exactly what we’re going to ultimately end up with, but I imagine he might say, “How about a keyboard on this song? A Farfisa organ?” I imagine anything is possible. There are a lot of possibilities there with him. I just think it will be cool. We’re not going to get out there, and do any note-for-note copies of any of this stuff. I want it to be exciting and of the moment. Hopefully, it’ll be like that. It’ll be a lot of excitement and spontaneity. I really want that.
RR: Whose idea was it to play this celebration of your 30th anniversary, which includes a full reading of your self-titled debut album?
MC: I’ve been candid about this right from the start, and I’ll tell you this—it wasn’t my idea, initially. It was my manager’s idea. He said, “Why don’t we do this? This would be cool. How about a 30th anniversary show?” And when he first hit me with this idea, I said, “Really?” and I was gritting my teeth. And then I said, “My first album came out in April of ’82, so, great, talk to me in 2012.” But I thought about it again, and I started to dig the idea. I remembered “Something’s Gonna Happen” came out in ’81, and then we started working on our first album at the end of ’81, so this genuinely is the 30th anniversary year of my beginnings as a recording artist. I thought, “It’s valid,” and I just wanted to do it. It took me a couple of days, but it sunk in on me, and I thought that it would be a really cool thing to do, so that was it.
RR: It is the 30th anniversary of your first single, and when I think of the recording industry now, there is definitely an emphasis on the single, again, in terms of the way the listener either acquires their music, or listens to music. What is interesting is that when you got into music in the beginning, you were going back to an age when there was more focus on the song as a singular force with your own music. You were returning to pop melodies as a song structure because at that time, music was becoming a little abstract, and losing the point. Is any of that true?
MC: Yeah, it’s true. I had this notion in my mind of a retro futurism thing. I grew up in the Detroit area, and it used to disturb me a lot to see how quick people were to throw things away, and tear buildings down. It just seemed like for so many years in the Detroit area people just loved to blow up buildings, and get rid of old buildings, and put up McDonald’s in their place. I remember seeing that happen many times in the Detroit area.
Now, this sounds crazy because every single thing you can think of is available at the touch of a button. You can go on YouTube and you can see anything you can think of like the earliest known film footage is right there in front of you. Any song from the whole history of recorded music—boom; I went on iTunes a while ago, and I bought some recordings from a guy called Billy Murray who was one of the first recording stars back in 1906.
But when I was in my late teens, early 20s, I was just trying to find my way in the world. I was just trying to construct some kind of worldview, and find things to feel connected with, and I always felt really strongly connected with the music I had grown up with. It was real fresh in my mind. I don’t know; it’s just a mental quirk of mine, but music is something that my mind can process really well.
That is where I was coming from back then. I think there were a lot of other people who had the same thought. Maybe, there was some kind of a whole movement right at that moment to try to say, “Let’s preserve the past and still go forward with our culture.” That was like a new idea at that time. It isn’t anymore. That’s how people think now, but in the beginning of my recording career, that was like a fresh idea.
RR: Your musical career began right around the time of the Dawn of the Video Age. How did that transform, or deter you, from what you wanted to do as a musician? In any way, do you look back and think that it would have been nice to have come of age in a different era, or do you feel videos ultimately benefited your career?
MC: Well, initially, it did benefit us because when MTV first started (big laugh)…they did play our stuff a lot.
RR: They did.
MC: That really had a big impact at that moment. The radio thing was a little spotty, but MTV was real solid and supportive of us in the beginning. This was even before…I remember talking with Lenny Waronker [Warner Brothers executive and producer] about
it, and it wasn’t on his radar at all. It certainly got on his radar pretty quick. But, yeah, that did help us. I didn’t have a problem with it. In fact, I miss it now just as somebody who watches T.V. once in a while. I thought it was great in its heyday.
RR: You were a song-oriented artist who focused on the song itself, and in the 1980s, it did force an artist to create a visual idea in some way. Whereas in the 1970s, you could find a musician very easily going up his own ass with an idea.
MC: Well, I will say—on the other hand—in contrast to what I just said, I don’t think I really ever had any great sense of how to deal with the video thing. I never had any real vision about it. It was all about records for me. That was the whole deal. I don’t want to get any of the videos I made back then. I’m really glad that they’re impossible to find right now. But, you know, I wanted to do it; I just never got my mind around it. There was just too much going on, and it wasn’t my thing anyway.
RR: So it benefited you as far as exposure, but you didn’t see it as “well, this is something that I hold in the same esteemed way as the actual song that I wrote.”
MC: That’s right. Yeah. My thing was records.
RR: Over the years, there has been an evolution of your lyrical content and musical direction. Do you look back at your body of work and see the different eras and where you moved within your career with some sense of an overview? Or, are you still too much in the midst of it all, and not really looking back?
MC: No, I can see real clear divisions as I look back. The initial body of work that I came up with when I first created a style for myself—there was just absolutely nothing interfering with my thought process. And there’s like a real clear point of view that ties it all together. That’s the initial stuff like the stuff that wound up on my first and second album [ Field Day ].
After that, I’m in show business, and my brain is getting kind of badly scrambled by all of that, so there was a middle period that I think of where I am going forward as a musician and a music maker, but the lyrics aren’t really as nailed down as they were on the earlier stuff. I didn’t want to think a lot of the things I was thinking. I was trying to block out a lot of stuff I was thinking, and just kind of writing around my thoughts some of the time. And that lasted for a while until I got out of the major label thing all together.
When I got out of it, I feel like I slowly got my vision back to the point that the first album of mine that I was 100% happy with once I got away from Warner Brothers and MCA and all of that was this one called #447. I think it’s a really nice record. There’s this real sense of intimacy to it, there’s a lot of creativity going on with the music, and there’s some new wrinkles in my approach. That was the first one where I thought, “Yeah, I’m back on track.” That is how it looks to me right now at my age.
RR: You have stayed relatively consistent in your songwriting process over the years, but have there been dry spells like you mentioned, where the muse wasn’t there, or you just weren’t listening?
MC: I have done it in fits and starts over the years. When I’m not writing, I’m not writing. Yeah, sure, there were lots of moments—especially when I had deadline pressures, and A&R people looking over my shoulder—where I was just lost. But, I don’t know, I always found a way to somehow crank it out, and do something fresh musically, I think, at least. What I really like on my records, when I hear them now, is that I am really proud of the guitar playing, and the way that developed over time. I always listen to that and think, “There’s something cool going on there.” And, also, there’s always a sense of detail like the percussion is really interesting. That is what I like about the stuff.
RR: That is what intrigues me about your upcoming collaboration with Ira Kaplan. I think, as guitarists and musicians, the two of you will create some new avenues to explore on stage. My eyebrows really shot up when I saw that combination.
MC: Oh, that’s great. I’m so glad to hear that. Yeah, you know, it’s very cool. I agree. They really are quite great, I think.
RR: You also have a music subscription and vinyl series coming out on your site.
MC: There will be physical product, but it’ll be vinyl singles. That was my idea right from the start—to do three singles a year for the next two years; one every four months on a regular schedule. That was the initial idea. Of course, downloads have to be part of it. A couple of years ago, a friend of mine and I were talking about the Fleet Foxes’ record and how much we loved it, and he said that he bought it on vinyl and he only bought new records on vinyl. He said whenever you buy a vinyl record, you get an access code for really good downloads along with it. I just thought that was so cool.
RR: Was it also the sound and quality of a vinyl record that hooked you?
MC: Yeah, there’s all of that. I did my last CD that came out in June of 2009 and it’s called Jaggedland, and I love it dearly, but the gestation period for that thing was really long and really arduous. I just can’t imagine going through that process, again, right now. I think it would be a waste of energy. But, on the other hand, I make records. I just can’t help it. The first thing was “is it even possible for me to go forward with record making?” And, then, I got this idea, and I thought it was a great idea.
