Kris Gruda Plays for You, by Kris Gruda

Kris Gruda Plays for You

by Kris Gruda

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1.	Vehicular Sound Collage 00:59	buy track
2.	Oil Change 00:26	buy track
3.	Bessies Blues (J. Coltrane) 00:56	buy track
4.	AM Radio Preacher 00:59	buy track
5.	Awake Nu (Don Cherry) 00:55	buy track
6.	Vote Him Out 00:27	buy track
7.	Scat 00:59	buy track
8.	Vehicular Sound Collage 00:59	buy track
9.	Orig. Blues 00:58	buy track
10.	Sirens/Improv 00:59	buy track
11.	Kazooing 00:40	buy track
12.	Dee Dee (Ornette Coleman) 00:58	buy track
13.	Volunteered Slavery (Rahsaan Roland Kirk) 00:56	buy track
14.	Improv. 00:57	buy track
15.	Lit Glasses 00:29	buy track
16.	Nutty (Thelonious Monk) 00:59	buy track
17.	Improv 00:44	buy track
18.	We Travel The Spaceways (Sun-Ra) 00:58	buy track
19.	PMA 00:51	buy track
20.	Improv 01:31	buy track
21.	Ex. From Complete Communion (Don Cherry) 00:54	buy track
22.	Beatbox 00:19	buy track
23.	Safety Glasses Upside Down 00:58	buy track
24.	Improv 00:54	buy track
25.	Humpty Dumpty (Ornette Coleman) 00:43	buy track
26.	Slide Groove 00:36	buy track
27.	Theme 00:56	buy track
28.	Blue Monk (Thelonious Monk) 00:53	buy track
29.	No Returning 00:42	buy track
30.	Improv 00:57	buy track
31.	Theme/Improv 00:50	buy track
32.	Theme/Improv 00:56	buy track
33.	Blues Vibe 00:56	buy track
34.	Monkey Says Hi 00:12	buy track

about

LP available on Forced Exposure - www.forcedexposure.com/Catalog/gruda-kris-plays-for-you-lp/PAL.077LP.html

or Kris Gruda's bandcamp - adurgsirk.bandcamp.com/album/plays-for-you

It's tempting to view guitarist Kris Gruda, a North Carolina resident, as part of a lineage of demented Southern avant-pickers stretching back to Chadbourne, and while that's not false, it's unnecessarily reductive. Gruda is but one particle in a contemporary wave of traveling minstrels plying the interstates and unnumbered highways of the Deep South, navigating between pickup gigs in urban centers from Asheville to Baton Rouge to Jacksonville to Amarillo, dipping into the free jazz songbook and a bottomless bag of capital-I-improv tropes to play for audiences of 0-50 intrepid listeners (most of them musicians themselves). Against all odds (and despite dismissal by a sea of jaded music "connoisseurs'' who would prefer to devour overpriced reissues than to attend actual performances), these musicians develop an evolving sonic language, unencumbered by dreams of success; nurtured by the promise of social connection, gas money, and the next bag of Beaver Nuggets.

Whether or not Gruda is one of these compulsive road-trippers is beside the point, because (as amply evidenced by his instagram account, @Grudakris) Gruda clearly spends a lot of his time in his car. Kris Gruda Plays for You was recorded entirely behind the wheel under lockdown in 2020-2021, mostly during shift breaks at the kombucha factory. Each track is a separate Instagram post, downloaded and spliced together into two unbanded sides (a la Beefheart's Strictly Personal), and as such, represents an audio verite tour of a musical vision that, amoeba-like, engulfs two worlds separated by a windshield -- the spinning car wash brushes, the passing cop cars, the preacher on the radio.

The cover (Gruda in a hairnet, oozing Waylon's outlaw bit and clutching a stickered acoustic) supplies a little bit of the IG multimedia appeal missing from the audio, but the sound ("without which none of this is possible," states Gruda) supplies an expansive narrative by itself. Each track, from the "Vote him Out" rap to the dual tracks of "Vehicular Sound Collage," is a gem of creative outreach, a stab not only against the claustrophobia behind the steering wheel, but also a rebellion against the forced isolation of the lockdown itself. The politics of Plays For You are Guthrie-direct, speak to individual action, and seek to inspire us to reach beyond our silos and attempt to reconstruct a virtual solidarity we could once access via a physical commons. But I suspect what will resonate most with listeners are the plaintive cries voiced by a canny (and virtuosically played) selection of classics by Coltrane, Kirk, Coleman, and Cherry, tiny scraps that remind us of a once-encompassing musical spirituality that spurred a half-dozen would-be revolutions (and which may someday do so again). Ultimately, the enthusiasm (and massive doses of sheer weirdness) Gruda exudes in Kris Gruda Plays for You lights up a big, friendly highway into the heart of a deeply idiosyncratic and charismatic vision that's a gas to listen to even stripped of its social media spectacle -- so put down your phone and just listen. — Tom Carter

credits

released September 1, 2023

Kris Gruda : guitar, voice, live electronics, kazoo

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about

Bill Orcutt San Francisco, California

shows

Apr 29

Solar Myth (presented By Ars Nova Workshop)

Philadelphia, PA
Apr 30

Le Poisson Rouge

New York (NYC), NY
May 6

Cedar Cultural Center

Minneapolis, MN
Jun 19

The Chapel

San Francisco, CA
Jun 20

Zebulon

Los Angeles (LA), CA

contact / help

Contact Bill Orcutt

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