Gary Lucas
Gary Lucas is an American guitarist, songwriter, and composer who was a member of Captain Beefheart's band. He formed the band Gods and Monsters in 1989.
Lucas has released more than 50 albums to date as a solo artist or band leader in a variety of genres, touring internationally.
Lucas has collaborated with Leonard Bernstein, Jeff Buckley, John Cale, Nick Cave, David Johansen, and Lou Reed. He has also worked with Chris Cornell, Najma Akhtar, DJ Spooky, Dr. John, Amanda Palmer, Bryan Ferry, The Future Sound of London, Allen Ginsberg, Peter Hammill, Warren Haynes, Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Geoff Muldaur, Bob Neuwirth, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Graham Parker, Van Dyke Parks, Iggy Pop, Yass Body, Roswell Rudd, Fred Schneider, Richard Barone, John Sebastian, Adrian Sherwood, Patti Smith, Peter Stampfel, Damo Suzuki, Steve Swallow, Bob Weir, John Zorn, Nona Hendryx, Emir Kusturica and the No Smoking Orchestra, Hal Willner, Kip Hanrahan, Elli Medeiros, Haydee Milanes, Suylen Milanes, Los Van Van, and Alabama Three.
In 2020, instead of doing live performances, which was not possible due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lucas started a Pandemic Live Streaming every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 3pm EST on his Facebook page, which has gathered fans from all over the world.
Early life
Lucas was born in Syracuse, New York. He obtained a degree in English from Yale University, before establishing his career in music first as a college DJ and then as music director at the college radio station, WYBC FM.According to his website, Lucas was encouraged by his father to try the guitar at the age of nine, while simultaneously studying the French horn, and played in jazz and rock groups during his teens in the 1960s.
Career
His next album, The Essential Gary Lucas, a 36-track, two-CD anthology was released in January, 2021, spanned 40 years of Lucas's music. Broadway World wrote that the album, "offers ample evidence of this maverick artist's trailblazing and unique career.... a truly epic body of work that spans psychedelic rock, film music, classical, electronica, jazz, blues, avant-garde, and world music excursions through 1930s Chinese pop, Hungarian folk, raga, and more, all unified by Lucas's virtuosic guitar and ceaselessly questing spirit."In late October 2020, Lucas was invited with the authorization of the Dutch government to play the So What's Next? Festival in Eindhoven in the Netherlands with his live solo score accompanying the Spanish Dracula on Halloween, and a new duo project with Dutch acoustic bassist and singer Peter Willems. Lucas successfully overrode the travel ban on Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic to journey to the Netherlands, the first country in Europe to get behind his music in a big way, and his shows were live-streamed on social media from the Eindhoven Muziekgebouw. While there, he recorded a new album with Willems, scheduled for 2021 release.
Le Beast Concrète
On July 1, 2021, Lucas released a new electronica collaboration, Le Beast Concrète, with producer/DJ David Sisko. First was the digital single "Realize It", with accompanying psychedelic animated clip by 3XA. About their new single, La Ruta wrote: "Always surprising and unfathomable, Gary Lucas presents a new single with producer and engineer David Sisko combining Gary's signature guitar riffs and lines with Sisko's deep 808 trap and relentless dancefloor beats with a result that reflects the guitar player's complexity mixing genres such as blues, rock, dance, trap and avant-garde". More positive reviews followed in UnCut magazine and elsewhere.Lucas also published several articles at Please Kill Me.com during the pandemic, including an extensive piece about his relationship with Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa, a memoir of working on a rap record with Vin Diesel and Arthur Russell, and an appreciation of the Bonzo Dog Band's Vivian Stanshall, the original Fleetwood Mac's leader Peter Green, and the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones.
On September 11, 2021, Lucas celebrated his 40th anniversary in music at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC with a 2-hour show featuring Ernie Brooks, Jerry Harrison, Thurston Moore and other special guests. On September 15, 2021, Rolling Stone magazine published their revised list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time which included Lucas and Jeff Buckley's "Grace", as featured on Buckley's two million selling 1994 album Grace.
Some of these collaborations appear on his retrospective 2000 album Improve the Shining Hour, which also features his film and TV music for ABC News, 20/20, and Turning Point. He has produced albums for composer/saxophonists Tim Berne and Peter Gordon, and for the French avant-rock band Tanger. He co-wrote Joan Osborne's Grammy-nominated song "Spider Web" from her triple platinum album Relish and co-wrote Jeff Buckley's anthems "Grace" and "Mojo Pin" from the Grace album, often cited as one of the Top 50 Albums of All Time.
Captain Beefheart
During his last year in high school, Lucas played for the documentary film unit of the Upstate Medical Center and wrote the musical score on his first film assignment. In 1971, he traveled from New Haven to New York City to see his childhood hero Captain Beefheart make his New York concert debut, and later became close friends. From being a Beefheart fan, he eventually became his co-manager in 1980 with his then wife Ling Lucas, and occasionally performed on stage all over Europe and the U.S. during the 1980–81 tours with Beefheart's band, performing the difficult and complex solo guitar piece "Flavor Bud Living".After gaining his degree, Lucas played for a few years with the O-Bay-Gone Band in Taipei, Taiwan while working for his father after college. He played with them for a few years before gaining a significant step in his career during 1980–82, when he was engaged to record on two Beefheart albums released by Virgin Records, on one of which he was full-time lead alongside Moris Tepper. Lucas performed over a period of five years with the last incarnation of Beefheart's Magic Band. He performed as a special guest—his first appearance on an album—on Beefheart's 1980 Doc at the Radar Station, which had put him on the musical map with critics and fans. He also read one of Van Vliet's poems, and joined the Magic band on guitar and bass. On 1982's Ice Cream for Crow, he was a full Magic Band member playing twin lead guitar alongside Tepper. In 1982 he became Van Vliet's sole manager as well as a full member of Beefheart's Magic Band.
After Captain Beefheart retired in the 1980s, Lucas continued to be associated with the Magic Band's former members. Several of Beefheart's former band members reformed the group, touring as the Magic Band from 2003 to 2006. Their 2007 double album and DVD, 21st Century Mirror Men, followed up their debut album Back to the Front, which was chosen as one of the best albums of 2004 by The Wire. In 1988, Lucas performed at New York's Knitting Factory. Shortly after, he was invited to appear at the 1988 JazzFest Berlin.
In 2006 Lucas co-led with saxophonist Philip Johnston an all-instrumental Beefheart tribute band, Fast 'n' Bulbous: the Captain Beefheart Project etc. Their debut album Pork Chop Blue Around the Rind was profiled on NPR and charted on college radio in the United States. 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, Switzerland; Vienna and Schwaz, Austria; and Ljubljana, Slovenia. The group released its second album, Waxed Oop, on Cuneiform Records in 2008, and performed at the Zappanale in Bad Doberan Germany in 2012.
2017 marked the 50th anniversary of the release of Beefheart's album Safe as Milk, and saw Lucas engaged in numerous projects to mark the occasion. This included feature coverage in MOJO magazine that coincided with the Captain Beefheart Weekend in Liverpool, England, where Lucas served on a panel at the participating Bluecoat Gallery. In collaboration with Dutch DJ/producer Co de Cloet, the final interview given by Don Van Vliet was set to music composed by Lucas. Titled "I Have a Cat," it was commissioned by Dutch national radio NPS where it was first broadcast in 1993. Later the project was released digitally by OkayMusic, and the pair performed the work live at the Zappanale in Germany as well as at the BimHuis in Amsterdam.
On February 17, 2013, Lucas led the 65-piece Metropole Orchestra in a symphonic tribute to Captain Beefheart at the Paradiso Amsterdam, produced by Co De Kloet. Titled "The World of Captain Beefheart", the concert featured Nona Hendryx as well as Jolene Grunberg, Tom Trapp and other Dutch singers.
In September 2017, the scaled-down five-piece Captain Beefheart tribute ensemble, The World of Captain Beefheart, led by Lucas and Nona Hendryx, performed an album teaser performance at the Public Theater. The self-titled album was released in November 2017 on Knitting Factory Records. January 22, 2018 saw a special multimedia performance of The World of Captain Beefheart at City Winery, New York.
Jeff Buckley/Gods and Monsters
In 1989, Lucas formed his band Gods and Monsters. He took the name from a line from the film Bride of Frankenstein: "To a new world of gods and monsters!" Originally an instrumental ensemble featuring two bass players, Lucas began writing songs and inviting singers to perform at an ad hoc basis in 1990. Lucas first met Jeff Buckley in New York at his father's, Tim Buckley’s, 1991 tribute concert, mounted by producer Hal Willner at St. Anne's Church in Brooklyn. Buckley stayed in New York and joined Gods and Monsters. Lucas composed solo guitar instrumentals for "Rise Up to Be" and "And You Will", which later became the musical templates for "Grace" and "Mojo Pin", which Lucas co-wrote with Buckley for his album, Grace. Early collaborations can also be heard on the Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas album Songs to No One, which charted internationally with worldwide sales approaching 100,000. In the film Greetings from Tim Buckley, Penn Badgely plays Buckley, and Tony Award winner Frank Wood plays Gary Lucas.In May 2011, Lucas released a new studio album with Gods and Monsters, titled The Ordeal of Civility. Gods and Monsters celebrated their 25th anniversary in June 2014 with a special performance at Poisson Rouge.
Early in 2018, Lucas performed a special concert of the dozen songs he co-wrote with Jeff Buckley. He performed with Jolene Grunberg and other singers, was accompanied by the 65-piece Metropole Orchestra at the Paradiso Amsterdam, and the show was produced by Co de Kloet.
In the fall of 2019, Lucas released The Complete Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas Songbook with Italian singer The Niro. The album was recorded in Rome at the end of 2018 and featured new studio versions of all 12 songs co-written by Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas including five never before officially released. By Christmas that year, the album was voted Best Album of 2019 by Classic Rock Magazine Italia.
Lucas has continued to operate Gods and Monsters on and off since 1989. Their last studio album was 2012's The Ordeal of Civility, which was produced by Jerry Harrison, who was also a group member for several years. The lineup also features Ernie Brooks on bass, Billy Ficca on drums, and Jason Candler on saxophone. The full lineup has performed in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Austin Texas.