Music of the Mountains: Tony Crank

Guitarist Tony Crank recently performed with friends as Tony Crank Music at The Old Gallery in Allenspark. On this episode of Music of the Mountains, we talk with Tony about his time as a guitarist in Colorado and the reasons he continues playing and learning today.

Our theme song is courtesy of singer-songwriter Brittney Wagner. Stream her record Better off Dead here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

And 12 customers, where the B and What's the C Oxford? 500. So we really hope that you enjoyed spending Memorial Day with your platforms. On Friday, May 15th, I talked to Calvin Cliff over the five minutes to look for performed with a group of his friends on Sunday, May 24th at the Old Gallery in Allen Cars. I interviewed him a couple of years back for his group Mountain Reverb. And now I'm excited to talk about his solo work. And in this case, a solo musical show, accompanied by some of his friends. So let's cut now to my interview with Tony Crank. Alright.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

So do you mind just introducing yourself real quick? Uh my name is Tony Crank, and I'm playing guitar and the musician in the Boulder County area.

SPEAKER_03 0:59

Sweet. And you've been performing here in the the Colorado area for a really long time.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

Yeah. You could say that. That's so true. And you'll be performing with I think a group of other musicians coming soon at the old gallery?

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Yes. I invited my friends to play with me.

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Amazing. So I I want to get a general just backstory on your time here in Colorado and uh just in general, how long you've been how long you've embraced music in your life.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

So I moved to Boulder County from New Mexico in 2006. And I was working at Mackey Auditorium for a little bit and I was doing some side recording projects. Right after that, I started getting into the recording business. Set up a little studio in Boulder, just uh east of it, across from uh the school district. There's a place that's got warehouse, and uh got together with some other musicians there that were looking for a Profiles engineer, and my background has education experience with the BA music and also experience in studio mixing and recording. So I've been doing that since 2010 and eleven, and I finally broke free from Mackie and just went straight into recording and did some side teaching in the Boulder County. Then I went some more teaching to fill up my spot because the place that I was recording out of there was no more the building was leased out to another person, so they're no longer uh available for me to lease out of. And that was kind of a breaking point from recording. Everybody was doing their home recordings. So I just kind of uh stuck in there as much as I could with teaching and went full time teaching and then something happened, I think, in twenty sixteen-seventeen of January, that New Year's, right after I was gonna drive across Colorado and 36 and I had a car accident. Another vehicle hit my car, they ran a red light. And so I had a c head concussion and four days later I had another head concussion with another car accident. And my doctor at the time was like, Do you play guitar? Yeah, I said, Yeah, I do, and maybe uh you can start playing guitar again, because you know, uh when I had my kind of head concussion, I had lost parts of my memory and parts of my skills were not quite there. And so I decided I'm just gonna try to play out a little bit. Yeah, I met this guy, his name is Earl that plays the native flute style or native style flute, and he was like, Come out to my open mic, and so I did. I joined him, and my skills were there, but my brain was not catching up with my skills yet. So I just stayed doing that and started playing out a bunch of open mics, which I'm not normally used to. And it was like pretty much in uh two or three years I was playing almost every night and just playing out with friends and having fun. And people would turn to me and say, Tody, our songs in A minor, G, F, and I'd be like, What is that? But I would never say anything, I would say sure. And I would just play along and play solo when they asked me to. And so then I started my my own music. I told Earl I said, I have my own music. And so Earl and I started working on my songs, and pretty much uh now I'm full blown out with a with a bass player and a drummer. Liam is an excellent jazz bassist, and he partakes into my classical guitar slash samba music, slash flamenco style music. So we were just experimenting with my music, and then Michael Wooton just recently joined my group a couple of years, maybe three years, off and on. Maybe two years, I'd say, but he and I would just play and he's very musical. Michael is I think he has like pretty famous in this area. Like that, and then we just started making beautiful music together.

SPEAKER_03 4:48

Amazing. And so in regards to like being able to embrace guitar again even even after all of that, you know, what was what was it kind of like just starting that that process again and being able to now basically a a decade later being able to do it as you know part of your regular radio daily life? Or embracing the guitar fully after all of that?

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Yeah, I it it was interesting because you know, I I have two daughters and they're just like wonderful humans and so I wasn't really planning on playing guitar out and I was planning on raising them, of course. And so when the accident happened, it was like I had to really pursue in playing music and whenever I played music I felt really comfortable and so it was like helping me making those synapses grow and start relearning guitar and it was fun. The process was extremely fun, just being challenged. And so when artists would be playing guitar or singing, I would just sit behind them and ask, you know, of course, if I can play with them and they would be like, sure uh and at first they'll be reluctant, and then I would just and as soon as they hear my guitar, they're like, Oh, okay, okay, yeah, that's really good. You're really adding something to the music. And I'm just like excited, and it makes me happy to support any person that's up there and make them sound good without putting too much onto it. So it was just the pure love and the pure joy of it, not so much for my ego or not so much for trying to make it.

SPEAKER_03 6:17

Absolutely. And along with the stuff that you're that you perform solo and along with performing with friends and all, you you are also part of a band that's been growing for a few years here in the in the Colorado area, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Yeah, I've been several bands, but the one group just recently broke up called Mountain Reverb. And that group, around about that same time that I met Earl, I met Carl in the fall, and he booked it all out, and I didn't know what it what what was happening, but he would book out all the shows which as a duo, and we created a band called Mountain Reverb Together. And we just I mean, uh he'll just let me rip on the guitar and add and support the the music, make it really exciting, and then we'll cover some tunes and then make it even more exciting, make it our own. And we invited friends to play with us, same similar situation on the electric guitar. And I think in twenty nineteen, around that time, I started slowly transitioning to slide guitar. And so the slide guitar was brought up a whole new medium. So it was really fun. So that's that was one of my favorite uh transitions from shredding on the guitar to sliding on the guitar, and and it was really, really complimentary to to the music that I was adding.

SPEAKER_03 7:29

For sure. And yeah, I had the I had the pleasure of interviewing you as part of Mountain Weaver a couple years back. So it's it's cool to be able to come back and talk about some solo stuff and and music you're continuing to pursue here in the area. Yeah. Um and with the different styles of guitar that you have embraced over the years, you know, what's what's fun about being able to try so many different styles as you continue to play with with a different combination of people?

SPEAKER_01 7:54

I think I like the challenge. Like I don't say, oh, I'm I mastered this, I'm gonna go on to this next part. No, what I would say to myself is I really am enjoying these new things that I'm adding to it. And coming from a background where there was very limited budget, very limited money, and it was minimal, incredibly minimal. So I was just trying to make the guitar do more things than creating more pedals on my floor. And I know I've delved into pedals before in my early years, like a wall pedal or a chorus pedal, compressor, etc. But it just it doesn't really make it to where it's your voice. It kind of hides it. So when I plug in straight into the amp, it it really amplifies me. And the same with the classical guitars, like the only thing I'm doing is add in a loop of myself playing, and I'm playing on top of whatever I created. So it's just a way to express, kinda like a medium. Some people delve in pottery and then switch over to acrylic and some go into some other medium like dancing.

SPEAKER_03 8:57

For sure. And what's been fun about being able to go on in any capacity and and be able to perform solo or with other people, especially when you just get to kind of jump in?

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Usually what happens is somebody would say, Tony, so-and-so needs a a guitar player. Go jump in there and we know what you can do, and you'll just fit right in. And most of the time, they're right. And sometimes I don't know enough about the music to be a good fit. And that's when I see myself being limited, like, oh wow, I I don't really get that genre of music. I better figure that out later. And so those are on my bucket list or not, you know, like, oh, I tried that, and I don't really feel like it's what it speaks to me sometimes. So it really just depends on the people that I jump in with. And usually when I jump in with people, it's more about supporting the music. Always about just doing what I'm supposed to do. Or if they want me to just crank it up, I'll say, sure, I'll I'll rip it up. Or if I just want to just hang back and provide some beautiful melodies behind them. That's also another another way to look at it with playing with musicians.

SPEAKER_03 10:07

For sure. Is there anything that you kinda hope people will be able to to take away from any of your performances when they see you perform with friends or performing solo or just anything in general?

SPEAKER_01 10:16

I think it's just adding my voice is what I look at. Some of my friends would say it I knew it was you before I even saw you on stage. I heard your guitar and I knew that you're part of the group and it's like a staple, a fingerprint that only I can create because it's me. And that's my goal, I guess, is just to let my I don't know, just like be really cool with being myself and really happy with just trying to let me be me versus me trying to imitate some other musician.

SPEAKER_03 10:50

For sure. And are there any kind of just differences that you feel in terms of whether you're performing original material or performing covers or performing with a group or performing by yourself? You know, is there is there anything that kind of sticks out about differences in any of those? When you're performing originals versus like when you're performing covers, is there anything kind of that feels different in the focus of of either of those, especially when, you know, you kind of lean into one over the other in certain shows, I suppose?

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Well, for example, group A allows me to m be me. And group A opens up a spot for me to let my voice come out. And sometimes it's limited and sometimes it's like full on, just let your freak fly, as Juni would say. But then there's other portions where there's very strict uh strict rules, and when I get into those rules, it becomes less of me. And when I'm into that, I'm trying to be something that I'm not, and it makes me feel kinda uncomfortable sometimes because it just feels like I'm part of a machine versus something that that's supposed to be coming out of me. Like if Steve Ravon was doing a Hendrix song, he got a lot of flack from it from interviewers. They would be like, you know, who's your favorite artist, Hendrix? And we heard you play uh a little wing, and he said, Yeah, but I did it my way, and I did it the way I thought I interpreted his performance. And I made it my own. And that's a a way to s you honor him. And it was a beautiful piece, and but if they want me to play exactly like Hendrix did, that's what he would say, it'd be a borough. It's not what he was looking for. And so as a musician, you want your voice to stick out more and reinterpret versus trying to do note for note. For sure.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

And yeah, I don't know, is there is there anything else in general about the performances that you jumped into or performances you have coming up, or anything else musically you want to add? I don't know. Just anything else you would want people to know.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

I think that if you put your I mean, this is probably just like a little advice because I had to do this. If I can just put my ego aside and allow myself to grow and see all my mistakes. If I didn't see those mistakes in myself, if I just covered up, I think it it would be a longer route to getting to who I really am. And for musicians out there, playing note for note or playing through pedals is great, but those are just stepping stones and they're not really your voice. Well, it could be, it definitely could be a voice if you have a goal, if you have something that speaks to the people. But don't cover your voice up because I think that sometimes when you hear yourself in the recording with your own voice, people are like, Oh my gosh, do I sound like that? Is that really how I sound? That sounds terrible. And they get fearful of it, and so they put echo on it, or they put all the stuff on it, and they're they're just trying to hide their voice from being so irritating to their own s head and it sounds too nasally or something in their own head. But really you have to learn to love yourself and really just advocate for yourself and be brave enough to to let your voice be heard.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

For sure. Yeah, I don't know. I think I think those are the the big questions that I have on my end. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

That sounds great.

SPEAKER_03 14:02

Well, if there's anything else big that you have, I I really appreciate your your time and this is a great conversation.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Well, thank you for calling me up, Jamie.

SPEAKER_03 14:09

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for taking the time to do this.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Well, I'm excited for the old gallery, so I get to have some fun.

SPEAKER_03 14:16

Sounds like it's gonna be really fun.

SPEAKER_01 14:18

I hope so.

SPEAKER_03 14:20

For sure.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Yeah, we're really excited to play. We played last night over at Bootstrap, and Bootstrap's uh at the moment is closing down their their show in in Longmont. And so that was my last performance there. I've been there since 2020, playing every Thursday night. So yeah, every Thursday night for once a month.

SPEAKER_03 14:39

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Bittersweet for the Thank you so much, Tony, for coming on board and joining us for the podcast. You can find Tony and his music on Facebook, Instagram, SoundCloud, and on his website at AnthonyCrank.com. And thank you so much, everybody, for tuning in to this week at Music of the Fox. Follow back next week for another FS. We can also find our podcast on the media section of our full page. Our Facebook, our Instagram at ntn.ear and our YouTube Facebook. If you have any questions or suggestions for the paper for the podcast, reach out to myself at immediately.com, my co-host Tyler Heckman at T Y L E R athemountenear.com, our editor in chief, Barbara Hart at infotemounteer.com, and general inquiries at front desk at the mountainear.com. I'll see you guys next week. Have a great rest of your day.