Gary Lucas Exhibits His Musical Vision at Spencertown Academy
Guitarist-composer takes audience on a journey through his unique musical world
(SPENCERTOWN, N.Y., February 25, 2024) – Guitarist and musical visionary Gary Lucas gave a master class in his unique musical stylings and his colorful, varied life in music last night at the Spencertown Academy Arts Center in this small hamlet in Columbia County, just across the Massachusetts border and the Berkshires.
In Gary Lucas’s musical world, genre doesn’t exist. A classical transcription hints at country-blues and 1930s Chinese pop has overtones of jazz. Lucas plays and composes whatever moves him. Invited to perform at the United Nations General Assembly as a soloist in a Holocaust Rembrance Day event, Lucas transcribed and rearranged a Janacek piano piece for guitar, playing in an open E-minor tuning. While Janacek’s melody was apparent throughout, Lucas made the piece wholly his own in the way he turned his guitar into something that transcended the capabilities of the instrument as we know it.
No matter what he plays, it all comes out in his unique musical language called Gary Lucas music. In that sense, Lucas’s music truly is sui generis. And in the Janacek, as a piece specifically arranged for a United Nations event, Lucas achieved the ideals upon which the organization was founded (and from which it could learn immensely, long ago having lost its way): breaking down cultural and national barriers to explore a shared musical humanity.
Lucas mostly performed instrumental numbers for solo guitas, but on “Swimming” he talk-sung in a vocal style akin to Lou Reed, who was one of dozens of creative musicians Lucas has worked with over the years, including Patti Smith, John Cale, Nick Cave, Thurston Moore, Leonard Bernstein, and, most famously, Captain Beefheart and Jeff Buckley. At the outset, Lucas played in a rootsy, bluesy style, wherein he laid down bottom, chords, and melody all at the same time through his skill, intellect, natural affinity for and knowledge of music and how it works and a wholesale singular approach to his instrument. Lucas’s masterful control of his patented techniques were at the service of his utterly original musical language, which had qualitis of trance and ecstasy often associated with music of the East.
Lucas pulled out his green-blue 1966 Stratocaster to perform his composition “Rise Up to Be,” which became the basis for Jeff Buckley’s signature number, “Grace.” Stressing unusual chords and modalities, Lucas took the audience from darkness to light, with the assistance of basic knobs and pedals helping to evoke the sound of ethereal angels. One can see why Buckley was so taken with the piece that he wanted to build his song upon it.
And, rare for a solo performer, Lucas found a way to make this music sound three-dimensional, with two hands supplying all the musical elements, including bass line, chords, melody, and harmony. There is little precedent for this kind of approach to his instrument, but Lucas clearly found a way to translate through his guitar the music he hears in his head. In that sense, it does no one any service to call him a guitarist. He is more a musical visionary who just happens to use the guitar to evoke his complex musical ideas. Some might call his style or approach “avant-garde,” and there are elements of and references to downtown avant-garde music, but Lucas, who is undoubtedly in part an intellectual artist, never plays for intellectual effect – even at his most experimental, he leaves a door open for listeners to find their way into his performance.
Lucas is something of an anarchic raconteur, and he peppered the concert with stories behind each number – tales of their inspiration or stories about how and with whom they came into being. In no small way, the evening served as a musical memoir or autobiography. After being treated to a diverse and pleasing evening of music, the audience left having become something of Gary Lucas experts, instilled with great appreciation for this one-of-a-kind, open-minded musical magpie, a world traveler seemingly open to any and all sounds and experiences, with an insatiable curiously about people, other musicians, art forms, all of which eventually find their way into and geting expressed through his unique musical language.
Lucas also offered his versions of some of Nino Rota’s themes scored for Fellini films, and a “Children’s March” by Australian-born composer Percy Grainger, in honor of Lucas’s stint playing for the Yale University Marching Band. He acknowledged his debut to Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart, with whom he served five years as manager and guitarist, with a version of the latter’s “Safe as Milk.” Lucas also played a medley of 1930s Chinese pop music that already embedded references to American styles like jazz and swing.
Other musical touchstones that Lucas mentioned in passing, all of whose influence could be heard in his work, included the Doors, Led Zeppelin, and country-bluesmen like Robert Johnson and Skip James.
Lucas ended the concert aptly with a Lucas-ization of the basic guitar riff powering the Rolling Stones song “The Last Time.” Here’s hoping it won’t be.
The auditorium at Spencertown Academy is a little-known gem of a room, with terrific sightlines (there’s probably not a bad seat in the house), good sound and lighting, and space enough to allow for variable setups – Saturday night included some café-style tables as well as rows of seating. One also got the sense that the programming at Spencertown is being reinvigorated, and if Saturday night’s turnout is any indication – a sold-out house of 90 concertgoers taking a chance on a musician who is hardly a household name – there is an audience hungry for well-curated events like these.
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Roll Call: Founding Members
Anne Fredericks
Anonymous (6)
Erik Bruun
Nadine Habousha Cohen
Fred Collins
Fluffforager
Benno Friedman
Amy and Howard Friedner
Jackie and Larry Horn
Richard Koplin
Paul Paradiso
Steve and Helice Picheny
David Rubman
Spencertown Academy Arts Center
Elisa Spungen and Rob Bildner/Berkshires Farm Table Cookbook
Julie Abraham Stone
Mary Herr Tally