Jonathan Kane - Biography
By Jeff Hunt
I dare you to name a more intensely powerful drummer or visionary multi-instrumentalist than Jonathan Kane. Kane has burned a spectacular trail through the experimental rock scene: first as a founding member of No Wave behemoth Swans; then as the percussive thunder behind the minimalist ensembles of La Monte Young and the guitar armies of Rhys Chatham. But now, first and foremost, front and center, is Kane’s blistering solo career – and underlying it all is Kane's complete and life-long immersion in the blues. Armed with a singularly wicked backbeat, Kane is the master of the double shuffle (Junior Wells dubbed it "the whorehouse shuffle"), and he deploys it to devastating effect. Add a dizzying whorl of cascading electric guitars, and you've got a rowdy, gut-bucket sound that shakes the meat right off the bone.
The breadth and depth of Kane’s pedigree is astounding. He was at Woodstock – as a 12-year old. A prodigy, he started on drums as a child. And it was also at 12 that a single LP changed his life. Kane’s father was the legendary photographer Art Kane, who shot some of the most iconic rock ‘n’ roll images of the 1960s for Life magazine – Aretha, The Stones, The Who, you name it (“A Great Day in Harlem,” the flag image on the cover of “The Kids Are Alright?” Art Kane). Anyway, Kane Senior was given an LP that didn’t interest him, so he passed it along to Kane Junior. It was Albert King’s Born Under a Bad Sign (1969 Chess), and Jonathan Kane was thunderstruck. Says Kane, “It changed all the rules as to how I looked at music.”
It was full blues immersion for Kane. How much so? During a photo session, his father was given a pair of drumsticks by Keith Moon, which he gave to Kane Junior. Other teens would have placed them in a shrine. How much of a blues purist was Kane? Unimpressed, he just used them. Pounded the skins until they broke, then tossed them. This was a kid on a mission. Kane laughs about it now, “Maybe something rubbed off on me, anyway.” Anyone who has seen Adult Kane tear up a kit, and a stage, will tell you that @#$% straight, something sure did. Kane is every bit as energetic as Moon was, and that’s sayin’ something, folks.
Kane dragged his older brother along for the ride, and while Jonathan Kane was perfecting a blisteringly intense shuffle, Anthony Kane was perfecting his vocals and chops on the harp. Soon it was official: The Kane Bros. Blues Band was born. With friends Josh Colow on guitar and Ray Ploutz on bass, they ventured out to play the bars of Upstate New York. Jonathan had to have his mother drop him off, and he had to sneak in. He was 15.
The Kane Bros. Blues Band played out incessantly for nearly five years, from 1972 to 1977. And they were good. Real good. They developed a rabid following throughout New York and Boston, and opened – to raucous, pounding reception – for blues royalty, including Muddy Waters, James Cotton, Willie Dixon, and Louisiana Red; Kane was even asked to join Koko Taylor’s band as her permanent drummer. He couldn’t. He was in high school.
All good things must come to an end, and The Kane Brothers Blues Band’s end came when Jonathan was 19. After an unsatisfactory two-year stint at Berklee College of Music, Kane plunged into the late-70s scene in New York’s Lower East Side, absorbing all the sounds they stifle at conservatory. Public Image Ltd., Cage, Tibetan chant, vocal polyphony, This Heat, Ligeti, and Moroccan music all made his playlist.
In 1980, through mutual friends, Kane met Michael Gira, whose band Circus Mort had just lost its drummer, immediately in advance of a recording session. Kane wasn’t big on the music, but he was impressed with the band’s ability to get well-paying gigs at the best clubs, and with Gira’s drive and intensity. Kane joined the band and the recording session. Of course, the week before the release date, Circus Mort broke up. Typical, right?
The less said about the self-titled Circus Mort EP (1980 Labor Records), the better. It’s an angst-laden new-wavey affair. Kane’s analysis: “Good live band, bad record.” The best thing about it is the uproarious cover, with Kane and Gira wearing more make-up than Tammy Faye Bakker. However, another Kane endeavor was about to erupt with far more rewarding – and long lasting – results.
Around the time he met Gira, Kane also met the artist Daniel Galliduani; the two were soon performing as Transmission, with Kane on drums and Galliduani on – actually, many people can’t tell what he’s playing. It’s heavily treated and processed, but what sounds like a raging inferno of electric guitars is, believe it or not, a saxophone. It was only the two of them, but together they created an orchestra’s-worth of supremely wild noise.
The self-titled EP (2007 Radium/Table of the Elements) is brief – like a tornado. Unclassifiable within any conventional genre, it recalls the improvisation and complex, trance-inducing beats of North African music. There’s also a crust of No Wave bluster, and enough percussive artillery to sink a small island.
The first track, “Fireball,” sets the tone for the rest of the CD: furious. Galliduani first lays down drones then adds fierce, Eastern-tinged polyphonics. Meanwhile, Kane is a frenzied dervish, generating complex, cross-tempos and rhythmic subdivision, with an intensity that must have required an unbelievable degree of concentration and stamina. Most drummers couldn’t do this for five seconds, much less five minutes. Imagine the Master Musicians of Jajouka – of course, it would have to be from the psychedelic Brian Jones recordings – powered with the crushing intensity of Swans, the twisted esoterica of Flowers of Romance by Public Image Ltd., and some unbelievably relentless drumming.
Concurrent with Transmission, Kane and Michael Gira formed the seminal band Swans. Kane brought in Galliduani, while Sue Hanel was the fourth member, on guitar. Hanel is a story waiting to be told. According to Kane, she was the most fearsome guitarist in New York City, and nearly 30 years later he still raves about how much he loved being in a band with her. Transmission both preceded and ran concurrent with the formation of Swans. Michael Gira was enough of a fan that he worked behind the board and mixed Transmission's few live shows. As the two bands practiced on the same gear in the same space (shared with another new band, Sonic Youth), much of their material evolved into the crucial rhythmic structure of early Swans tracks, including the crushingly intense debut EP, Swans (1982 Labor Records), and the standout track "Weakling" from Swans’ first full-length, Filth (1983 Labor Records). Kane quit the band in 1983 after their set at the legendary Speed Trials festival which also hosted Sonic Youth, The Fall, Lydia Lunch, and the early, punk version of the Beastie Boys; you can hear him on the vinyl version, Speed Trials (1985 Homestead).
Swans, in turn, led to what would become the lengthiest collaboration of Kane’s career. Gira had taken a recent turn in minimalist composer Rhys Chatham’s outfit, and introduced him to Kane in 1983. It’s a releationship that continues to this day, as Kane combines his heavy beats with Chatham’s massed-guitar compositions. That sound is epitomized by the 1997 classic, "Guitar Trio,” in which several rock guitarists employ careful picking to obtain melodies using only the overtones of single notes. Throughout it all, Kane pounds behind the drums, playing with non-stop intensity for the duration. The track was originally released on Chatham’s LP Die Donnergotter (1987 Homestead, 2006 Radium/Table of the Elements); the latest live rendition included an all-star line-up featuring members of Sonic Youth, Tortoise, Husker Du, and more: Rhys Chatham & His Guitar Trio All-Stars-Guitar Trio Is My Life (2008 Radium/Table of the Elements).
Kane is also the drummer for Chatham's masterpiece, a symphony for 100 electric guitars, documented on An Angel Moves Too Fast to See (2006 Radium/Table of the Elements). It is one of the most extraordinary works in the minimalist canon, and Kane manages to vivify the majesty inherent in Chatham’s amplified imagination. Together they have presented it live over 30 times on four continents, including a spectacular appearance in front of the lava flows on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean. Chatham’s largest performance to date was for 400 guitars on the steps of Paris’ Sacre Coeur basilica; Kane handles the rhythm on that as well: A Crimson Grail: For 400 Electric Guitars, Bass, and Drums (2007 Table of the Elements).
In the early 90s, the Chatham connection led to a gig with another major figure in the minimalism panthron: legendary recluse La Monte Young. When Young took the unusual step of forming a microtonally charged blues-rock ensemble, Kane was his man. The Forever Bad Blues Band toured extensively, and released a double CD, Just Stompin': Live at the Kitchen (1992 Gramavision). It’s an admirable effort to fuse lengthy, raga-friendly workouts with the shuffle and roadhouse boogie of the blues. As Young adapts his loose composition “Dorian Blues in G,” the band screeches off in search of that magical, legendary blue-note pitch that’s inspired artists from Son House to Jimi Hendrix. Kane keeps the double-shuffle roadhouse vibe rolling right along.
In 2002 Kane returned to his roots, and did a few reunion shows with the Kane Bros. Blues Band. The blues. It was still Kane’s be-all and end-all, but after performing powerful, epic minimalism for two decades, he had a few extra aces up his sleeve. After so many years of supporting other musicians, Kane finally went solo. The result, February (2005 Table of the Elements), is a genre-obliterating classic. Kane summons Swans' concussive wallop, Chatham's dense guitar strata (Kane even manages a rollicking version of “Guitar Trio"), and the perpetual propulsion of 70s krautrockers Neu, then steers it all head-on into the blues. Beneath the high-decibel bombast, he powers guitar-driven minimalism into the blues, and the blues into guitar-driven harmonic maximalism.
Kane also assembled a crack squad of musicians to perform with him live. The band, also known as February, has included some of New York’s finest up-and-coming young musicians and composers, including David Daniell, Paul Duncan, Igor Cubrilovic, and Byron Westbrook; the current roster features David Bicknell and Jon Crider of Clara Venus, plus Adam Wills of Bear in Heaven, and Peg Simone, a talented, bluesy solo artist in her own right. They’ve torn it up on a number of tours, opened for Kane’s old buddies Mission of Burma, and even stole the show from a few of Rhys Chatham’s big-band events.
If Kane’s rollicking, majestic and critically-acclaimed debut set folks up with his lustrous, deep-grooved sound; the follow-up EP is the bare-knuckled knock-out punch. I Looked at the Sun (2007 Radium/Table of the Elements) rocks. On the opening track, "BQE," Kane compliments his signature wall of guitars with the high-lonesome serenade of pedal steel. He then puts that pedal to the metal and barrels through the psychedelic badlands of Mississippi Fred McDowell’s classic "I Looked at the Sun." Add the Dixie-fried strut of ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons to the guitar armies of Glenn Branca, and you're still only halfway to Kane's mind-blowing reinvention of both minimalism and the blues.
Later in 2007, Kane even cut a holiday EP. The Little Drummer Boy (2007 Radium/Table of the Elements) is done in his inimitable style, with layers of guitars, snow-drift-deep bass — and you'd better believe there's drums. As far as sleighs go, it's jacked-up and tricked-out, with 850 horses and not a restrictor plate in sight.
Jet Ear Party (2009 Radium/Table of the Elements), Kane's second full-length release, is a masterpiece of raw, ass-thumping Americana. With guest appearances from members of his live band, February, Kane barrels into the eight tracks like a freight train. He lunges at breakneck boogies and tom-driven swamp stomps with equal abandon. In a radical departure, he tones down his mojo long enough to accommodate female vocals for a breathlessly sexy, overtone-drenched soul ballad. Kane even pilots hardcore R&B a la Wilson Pickett into the Creedence bayou for a sweat-soaked cover of Sly Stone's "Thank You Fallettinme Be Mice Elf Agin" – and it's got a freak-out bagpipe solo that would make The Stooges proud. Seriously, he's not holding anything back.
After three decades Jonathan Kane continues to be an unstoppable force on concert stages around the world, rolling down his Highway 61 of the mind. Forget about The Black Keys; forget about The White Stripes. Merging pelvic-pounding rhythm and lustrous harmonic bliss, Jonathan Kane is single-handedly reinvigorating the blues for the 21st century – in vivid, raging Technicolor.
