The Herald-Palladium, 6/17/2010

A penchant for simplicity

Marshall Crenshaw bringing his acoustic show to The Acorn

By JEREMY D. BONFIGLIO
H-P Features Writer

THREE OAKS — Marshall Crenshaw starts laughing as soon as the words leave his mouth.

“I think the Internet might be a fad,” he says by telephone from his home in New York.

“OK, I’m not really serious when I say that, but I do think there’s a little backlash starting to form about what the Internet has done to complicate our lives. I don’t think music has been that well served by the Internet. It just sounds generic to me. Of course, I don’t like reading the newspaper online either.”

That’s why Crenshaw, who is currently touring in support of last year’s “Jaggedland” album, is planning to release a series of new singles on vinyl over the course of the next two years.

“I don’t have this completely figured out yet, but starting in the next three or four months I’m going to start putting out a single every four months,” he says. “I already have a few songs recorded. And I’m talking about real records – on vinyl. Records still have this appeal for me. I think it’s a great art form, and it’s something I want to be involved in.”

Crenshaw’s penchant for the simplicity of the 45 rpm single also may explain why the Detroit-born musician has embraced performing solo acoustic shows, including Sunday’s stop at The Acorn Theater in Three Oaks.

“I first took a crack at it in 2000 at a club in Albany,” Crenshaw says. “Right away I saw the potential of it because I could hear. I didn’t have cymbals crashing in my ears. Everything was stripped down, and the songs were sort of laid bare. I’m so used to doing it now that I’ve gotten to really love it. Maybe I just reached a certain level of maturity or something.”

Crenshaw may be best known in pop circles for his 1982 self-titled debut which included the infectious Top 40 hit “Someday,

Someway.” Although he contends that he has since been relegated to “the NPR singer-songwriter circuit,” his music still resonates classic attributes such as an indelible sense of melody and a certain sense of lyrical intimacy.

“I was just recently listening to stuff from the first record, and I kept thinking that everything was so speedy,” Crenshaw says. “I play slower now. My songs are more stretched out and slower, so the aging process has been my biggest influence, but I really love the way my stuff sounds now and the way it’s progressed.”

Crenshaw began playing music on his father’s guitar at age 10.

“All the songs on the radio, at least the ones I liked, only had four chords in them,” Crenshaw says. “They were very simple, and as soon as I’d been playing the guitar for a couple of months it seems like I could just play along to the radio. I had a pretty good ear and a pretty good memory for songs, so it all came pretty easily.”

What didn’t come easy was what to do with his musical gift. Crenshaw says after high school, he “was kind of adrift, scuffling around” the Detroit area.

“I had a job at a snowmobile factory for a while,” he says. “Then one day some guy said we should join the UAW, so we did and the next day they closed the place and laid us all off. Then I had a job at a screen printing factory for a while. Just different low on the food chain kind of jobs. It finally hit me that I needed to uproot myself; that there was zero opportunity for me there.”

Crenshaw was playing in a Top 40 country band when he saw an ad in Rolling Stone magazine looking for Beatle look-a-likes for the Broadway show “Beatlemania.” He answered the ad and portrayed John Lennon from March 1978 until he left

the show in February 1980. He then recorded the single “Something’s Gonna Happen” for Alan Betrock’s Shake Records, which led to a deal with Warner Bros. and his acclaimed pop masterpiece in 1982. Crenshaw’s second album, 1983’s “Field Day,” was another critical smash and led to a successful slate of 20-plus years of studio recordings.

“All at once it was exhilarating and frightening at the same time,” Crenshaw says. “It was really a sharp transition for me, meeting new people and being bombarded with attention. Up until that time I had always been an insular person, sort of private. There were all kinds of pressures and opportunities, and I just did the best I could.”

Crenshaw has also maintained a lucrative side gig in film. Within a span of 11 months, he appeared in the 1986 Francis Ford Coppola film “Peggy Sue Got Married” and played Buddy Holly in the 1987 Richie Valens biopic “La Bamba.”

“From the very first time I was on a film set, I really got a kick out of it,” Crenshaw says. “It was just this beehive of creativity. I’ve had some good luck with having songs placed in films and occasionally writing songs for films. It’s been really good to me over the years.”

In fact, Crenshaw says his biggest American hit came from co-writing the Gin Blossoms’ “Til I Hear It from You” for the 1995 film “Empire Records,” which reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100.

More recently, he penned the title track to the 2007 film “Walk Hard,” which was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.

“When you write for film, it does come from a different place,” Crenshaw says. “There’s already an agenda in front of you – the song is supposed to represent certain characters or a set of circumstances. It kind of makes it easier. I wrote ‘Walk Hard’ in like an hour and a half. When I have to dredge something from my own imagination, it can take weeks.”

That was certainly the case with 2009’s “Jaggedland,” an album Crenshaw is immensely proud of whose songs also will make up the bulk of Sunday’s set.

Crenshaw describes the 12 tracks on the record as musical observations about the human experience, mortality, the state of the

world and, of course, love as viewed through his inimitable perspective. He started dabbling with the record “for a few years” with producer Stewart Lerman at his home studio before deciding he needed a more structured environment.

“I really wanted to play with drummer Jim Keltner,” Crenshaw says. “I’ve been a fan forever, and I figured if I’m playing with him I don’t have to explain anything. Once Jim was onboard and I knew we were going to do the record in LA, we put together a team and we recorded it in nine days from top to bottom. It just was really a gas.”

In addition to Keltner (whose credits include The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, Brian Wilson and Joni

Mitchell), Crenshaw tapped guitarists Greg Leisz (Lucinda Williams, Robert Plant) and the MC5’s Wayne Kramer as well as legendary vibraphonist, Emil Richards (Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Frank Sinatra).

“I worked really hard and really pushed myself,” Crenshaw says. “I wanted to do the absolute best I was capable of, and I felt really gratified in the end. I truly believe these are some of my best songs ever.”

jbonfiglio@TheH-P.com