KRIS DEMEANOR AND HIS CRACK BAND
October 8 and 9
Ironwood Stage and Grill
There are things in life that make you quiver, things that make you squirm and things that take you so far out of your comfort zone that it feels like an out-of-body experience.
Using your credit card to pay off your line of credit that went into overdraft while you were making the minimum payment on the credit card can make you quiver. Having ex-sex and finding out their technique’s improved significantly since last time can make you squirm. And if you want to get dangerously out of your comfort zone – well, you can always try attending a live show by Kris Demeanor and his Crack Band.
It seems to be part of Demeanor and his band members’ collective personality to want to lead, or even push, people over a cliff they’ve never been down before. For instance, at a recent gig for volunteers at the local folk music festival, Demeanor grew bored of the empty dance floor in front of him. He told the audience that he was going to begin playing the opening riff of a song and continue to play nothing but that riff until the dance floor showed some movement. If that movement came in the form of bacteria that sprang up over the next few months, so be it. Demeanor was in it for the long haul. With that comment, he began the riff and lay down on the floor with his legs crossed in an I’m-bored-passing-the-time position.
Two things stood out immediately. The first was how phenomenal the Crack Band sounded even while confined to one riff. The second was the boldness of the move. In an era when so many artists seem to be out there merely for the opportunity to place their pucker against the audience’s gluteus maximus, Demeanor took a risk in demanding that the people on the other side of the stage lights give something back to the musicians – something beyond the culturally pre-programmed clapping response. So how did the gamble pay off? After about three minutes, a brave couple got up, and within 30 more seconds, the dance floor exploded.
In a phone conversation a few days later, Demeanor was stoic about his attempts to take audience members out of their comfort zones. "It’s not even intentional. I kind of consider it part of the game, part of the fun of it. It’s never even been a question – for me it’s always been more fun to do that. And I think it’s even part of entertaining the band sometimes, and it just spilled over. I like the reactions," he says, adding that many of the people who come to shows now have begun to expect nothing less from the band.
Demeanor and his Crack Band – guitarist Chantal Vitalis, bassist Diane Kooch and percussionist Peter Moller – have played a wide range of venues in Canada and Australia during the past three years as a lead-up to recording a live album at the Ironwood. There are several reasons to complete the album now, including the financial efficiency of recording an album in two nights, an abundance of new songs, the evolution and seasoning of some older numbers and, Demeanor stresses, the virtuosity of the band.
"I have to use them before they get disenchanted and leave me," he jokes. His previous albums, a self-titled effort released in 1999 and last year’s Lark, included his band members in various combinations.
Demeanor counts live tracks by Bruce Springsteen and Dire Straits as music that influenced him personally, music he listened to over and over again as he sat in his buddy’s car overlooking the reservoir in high school. Planning his own live recording has been an eye-opener. He booked the dates a couple of months ago so he’d have to force himself to get it done, and then chose Captain Tractor’s Brock Skywalker, who just finished a two-year recording course, to engineer it. With computers and mixers, the pair expects to make a 16-track recording. Demeanor had thought the well-seasoned band would just click into place, but found out that it needed nearly as much attention as the details.
"You don’t realize what you have to go through as far as rehearsal because you really have to be very precise about stuff you didn’t have to be precise about before." To complicate matters, a three-piece horn section and guest singers Janine Bracewell – who used to play with Vitalis and Kooch in Same Difference in the ’80s – and Monica Wenzel-Curtis, Demeanor’s partner in Tinderbox a few years back, will also appear.
Between the extra people and the technology, Demeanor is hoping to release an album by Christmas that sounds pretty much like the band sounded on those two nights, although he hasn’t ruled out a few overdubs.
"If there’s a really big glitch in the song, we’re just going to have to stop and do it again. The audience is going to have to understand. Definitely the lead vocals I want to get done. I don’t want to go in and try to sing over top of them. But things like maybe some extra padding with a couple of background vocals or an acoustic guitar, that’s just kind of colouring the sound a little bit. I know that’s a trick that’s done all the time.
"I was listening to Peter Gabriel’s live album and there’s a list of credits that were like 30 other things that were added. And I’m thinking he was pretty fair stage sound. But in general, we’re going to try to make sure that what’s on the recording is what we capture on those nights."
But just because they’re recording a live album doesn’t mean the unpredictable flavour of the band’s live shows will be sacrificed. Music fans can expect to arrive at the Ironwood and find a list of instructions on the tables for audience participation in certain songs.
"The song ‘You’re You,’ (it goes) ‘You’re the something without the something,’ we list off over and over again. Were going to do that in the first set. People are going to have to list off their own combinations of ‘you’re the something without the something’ and then we’re going to pick the best ones at the break and do an audience version of that in the second set. There’s going to be a participation element just to make people really uncomfortable. Hopefully that will be fun." |
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