Gary Lucas

Gary Lucas ( born June 20, 1952 in Syracuse, New York) is an American fusion guitarist and songwriter.

Life and work

Lucas played as a nine year old guitar and during high school French horn. At Yale University, he studied English, but was moonlighting as a college deejay and worked as musical director of the university radio WYBC FM. He then went on Travel: In Vienna he had an engagement as a guitarist in Leonard Bernstein's Mass, then he spent two years in Taiwan, where he was locally successful with the band he founded O- Bay -Gone. From 1980 to 1982 he played in the band of Captain Beefheart, on whose albums Doc At the Radar Station (1980) and Ice Cream For Crow (1982 ) he played. After Beefhart had dissolved his band, Lucas worked for a time as a producer. In 1989 he founded Gods & Monsters, a rock band with a rotating cast, who was among other things, Jeff Buckley. 1991 Lucas appeared solo album Skeleton At the Feast. Next, he designed a guitar accompaniment for the silent film " Golem " (1920), which he performed with the film. In the 90s he wrote with Joan Osborne hit the "Spider Web".

Among his albums stands out The Edge Of Heaven (2003), on which he performs bizarre reworkings of Chinese pop music. The albums Diplopia (2003) and The University of Absence (2004) originated with the Dutch lutenist Jozef van Wissem, the album Beyond the Pale with British Elektronikduo The Dark Poets. In 2006 he toured with the Beefheart tribute project Fast ' n' Bulbous, with whom he appeared on the Frankfurt Jazz Festival. He continued to work with Lou Reed, John Cale, Nick Cave, John Sebastian, John Zorn, Bryan Ferry, Patti Smith, DJ Spooky, Damo Suzuki, Iggy Pop, Dr. John, Allen Ginsberg, Graham Parker and the field of jazz with Roswell Rudd, Steve Swallow, Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman, and Billy Bang. Lucas also holds lectures on the content, origin and background of his plays. He also gives master classes as guitarist around at the Amsterdam Conservatory and at the University of Hawaii.

Discography

  • Gods and Monsters ( 1992)
  • Bad Boys of the Arctic (1994 )
  • Evangeline (1997)
  • Busy Being Born ( 1998)
  • The Edge of Heaven ( 2001)
  • Diplopia (2003)
  • The Universe of Absence (2004)
  • Coming Clean (2006)
  • Beyond the Pale (2008)

Lexigraphischer entry

  • Wolf Kampmann Reclams Jazz Encyclopedia Stuttgart 2003
Syracuse (New York) The Golem: How He Came into the World Deutsches Jazzfestival Integrated Authority File
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