Gary Lucas

At 71 years old, Gary Lucas physical status not available right now. We will update Gary Lucas's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

His next album, The Essential Gary Lucas (Knitting Factory Records), a 36-track, two-CD anthology was released in January, 2021, spanned 40 years of Lucas's music. Broadway World wrote that the album, “offers ample evidence of this maverick artist's trailblazing and unique career.... a truly epic body of work that spans psychedelic rock, film music, classical, electronica, jazz, blues, avant-garde, and world music excursions through 1930s Chinese pop, Hungarian folk, raga, and more, all unified by Lucas's virtuosic guitar and ceaselessly questing spirit.”

In late October 2020, Lucas was invited with the authorization of the Dutch government to play the So What's Next? Festival in Eindhoven in the Netherlands with his live solo score accompanying the legendary Spanish Dracula on Halloween, and a new duo project with Dutch acoustic bassist and singer Peter Willems. Lucas successfully overrode the travel ban on Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic to journey to the Netherlands, the first country in Europe to get behind his music in a big way, and his shows were live-streamed on social media from the Eindhoven Muziekgebouw. While there, he recorded a new album with Willems, scheduled for 2021 release.

On July 1, Gary unleashed his latest project, a new electronica collaboration with producer/dj/beat master extraordinaire David Sisko. First, up out of the box was their digital single Realize It, with accompanying psychedelic animated clip by 3XA. The new single is available for streaming and download. About their new single, La Ruta (Spain) raved: "Always surprising and unfathomable, Gary Lucas (Captain Beefheart, Peter Hammill, John Cale, Lou Reed, etc) presents a new single with producer and engineer David Sisko combining Gary's signature guitar riffs and lines with Sisko's deep 808 trap and relentless dancefloor beats with a result that reflects the guitar player's complexity mixing genres such as blues, rock, dance, trap and avant-garde. More great reviews followed in UnCut Magazine and elsewhere, which are collected with all the video clips to date for the project here.

Gary also published several articles at Please Kill Me.com during the pandemic, including an extensive piece about his relationship with Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) and Frank Zappa, a memoir of working on a rap record with Vin Diesel and Arthur Russell, and an appreciation of the Bonzo Dog Band's Vivian Stanshall, the original Fleetwood Mac’s leader Peter Green, and the Rolling Stone’s Brian Jones.

On September 11, 2021, Lucas celebrated his 40th anniversary in music at Le Poisson Rouge in NYC with a 2 hour show featuring Ernie Brooks, Jerry Harrison, Thurston Moore and other special guests. On September 15, 2021, Rolling Stone magazine published their revised list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time which included Gary Lucas and Jeff Buckley’s Grace, as featured on Jeff Buckley’s two-million selling 1994 album Grace.

Some of these collaborations appear on his retrospective 2000 album Improve the Shining Hour, which also features his film and TV music for ABC News, 20/20, and Turning Point. He has produced albums for composer/saxophonists Tim Berne and Peter Gordon, and for the French avant-rock band Tanger. He co-wrote Joan Osborne's Grammy-nominated song "Spider Web" from her triple platinum album Relish and co-wrote Jeff Buckley's anthems "Grace" and "Mojo Pin" from Jeff's 2 million selling Grace album, often cited as one of the Top 50 Albums of All Time.

During his last year in high school, Lucas played for the documentary film unit of the Upstate Medical Center and wrote the musical score on his first film assignment. In 1971, he traveled down from New Haven to New York City to see his childhood hero Captain Beefheart, (Don Van Vliet) make his NYC concert debut, and later became close friends. From being a Beefheart fan, he eventually became his co-manager in 1980 with his then wife Ling Lucas, and occasionally performed on stage all over Europe and the U.S. during the 1980–81 tours with Beefheart's band, performing the difficult and complex solo guitar piece "Flavor Bud Living".

After gaining his degree, Lucas played for a few years with the O-Bay-Gone Band in Taipei, Taiwan while working for his father after college. He played with them for a few years before gaining a significant step in his career during 1980–82, when he was engaged to record on two Beefheart albums released by Virgin Records, on one of which he was full-time lead alongside Moris Tepper. Lucas performed over a period of five years with the last incarnation of Beefheart's Magic Band. He performed as a special guest—his first appearance on an album—on Beefheart's 1980  Doc at the Radar Station, which had put him on the musical map with critics and fans. He also read one of Van Vliet's poems (“One Man Sentence” or “Untitled”), and joined the Magic band on guitar (“Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles”) and bass (“Making Love to a Vampire with a Monkey on My Knee”). On 1982's Ice Cream for Crow, he was a full Magic Band member playing twin lead guitar alongside Tepper. In 1982 he became Van Vliet's sole manager as well as a full member of Beefheart's Magic Band.

After Captain Beefheart retired in the 1980s, Lucas continued to be associated with the Magic Band's former members. Several of Beefheart's former band members reformed the group, touring as the Magic Band from 2003 to 2006. Their 2007 double album and DVD, 21st Century Mirror Men, followed up their debut album Back to the Front, which was chosen as one of the best albums of 2004 by The Wire. In 1988, Lucas performed at New York's Knitting Factory. Shortly after, he was invited to appear at the 1988 JazzFest Berlin.

In 2006 Lucas co-led with saxophonist Philip Johnston an all-instrumental Beefheart tribute band, Fast 'n' Bulbous: the Captain Beefheart Project etc. Their debut album Pork Chop Blue Around the Rind was profiled on NPR and charted on college radio in the United States. In Fall 2006, they toured Europe extensively, selling out shows at the London Jazz Festival, in Amsterdam's Bimhuis, as well as playing in Bern, Switzerland; Vienna and Schwaz, Austria; and Ljubljana, Slovenia. The group released its second album, Waxed Oop, on Cuneiform Records in 2008, and performed at the Zappanale in Bad Doberan Germany in 2012.

2017 marked the 50th anniversary of the release of Beefheart's album Safe as Milk, and saw Lucas engaged in numerous projects to mark the occasion. This included feature coverage in MOJO Magazine that coincided with the Captain Beefheart Weekend in Liverpool, England, where Lucas served on a panel at the participating Bluecoat Gallery. In collaboration with Dutch DJ/producer Co de Cloet, the final interview given by Don Van Vliet was set to music composed by Lucas. Titled "I Have a Cat," t was commissioned by Dutch national radio NPS where it was first broadcast in 1993. Later the project was released digitally by OkayMusic, and the pair performed the work live at the Zappanale in Germany as well as at the BimHuis in Amsterdam.

On February 17, 2013, Lucas led the 65-piece Metropole Orchestra in a symphonic tribute to Captain Beefheart at the Paradiso Amsterdam, produced by Co De Kloet. Titled The World of Captain Beefheart, the concert featured soul singer Nona Hendryx (Labelle) as well as vocal contributions from Jolene Grunberg, Tom Trapp and other Dutch singers.

In September 2017, the scaled-down 5-piece Captain Beefheart tribute ensemble The World of Captain Beefheart, led by Lucas and Nona Hendryx, performed an album teaser performance at the Public Theater. The self-titled album was released in November 2017 on Knitting Factory Records. January 22, 2018 saw a special multimedia performance of The World of Captain Beefheart at City Winery NYC.

In 1989 Lucas formed his band Gods and Monsters. He took the name from a line from the film Bride of Frankenstein: “To a new world of gods and monsters!” Originally an all instrumental jazz ensemble featuring two bass players, Lucas began writing songs and inviting singers to perform at an ad hoc basis in 1990. Lucas first met Jeff Buckley in New York at the 1991 Tim Buckley tribute concert, mounted by producer Hal Willner at St. Anne's Church in Brooklyn. Jeff Buckley stayed in New York and joined Lucas's band, Gods and Monsters. Lucas composed solo guitar instrumentals for "Rise Up to Be" and "And You Will", which later became the musical templates for "Grace" and "Mojo Pin", which Lucas co-wrote with Buckley for his popular and critically acclaimed album Grace. Early collaborations can also be heard on the Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas album Songs to No One, which charted internationally with worldwide sales approaching 100,000. In the film Greetings from Tim Buckley] (2013), Penn Badgely plays Buckley, and Tony Award winner Frank Wood plays Gary Lucas.

In May 2011, Lucas released a new studio album with Gods and Monsters, entitled The Ordeal of Civility. Gods and Monsters celebrated their 25th anniversary in June 2014 with a special performance at (Le) Poisson Rouge.

Early in 2018, Lucas performed a special concert of the dozen songs he co-wrote with Jeff Buckley. He performed with Jolene Grunberg and other singers, was accompanied by the 65-piece Metropole Orchestra at the Paradiso Amsterdam, and the show was produced by Co de Kloet.

In the fall of 2019, Lucas released The Complete Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas Songbook (Esordisco) with Italian singer The Niro (Davide Combusti). The album was recorded in Rome at the end of 2018 and featured new studio versions of all 12 songs co-written by Jeff Buckley and Gary Lucas including five never before officially released. By Christmas that year, the album was voted Best Album of 2019 by Classic Rock Magazine Italia.

Lucas has continued to operate Gods and Monsters on and off since 1989. Their last studio album was 2012's The Ordeal of Civility, which was produced by Talking Heads’ Jerry Harrison, who was also a group member for several years. The lineup also features Ernie Brooks (The Modern Lovers) on bass, Billy Ficca (Television) on drums, and Jason Candler (Hungry March Band) on saxophone. The full lineup has performed in St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Austin Texas.

Gary has a long history working with Chinese music, stemming back to two years working for the family business in Taipei Taiwan from 1975 to 1977. In 2001, an album titled The Edge of Heaven: Gary Lucas Plays Mid-Century Chinese Pop, was released on the French government sponsored Label Bleu to wide acclaim and received rave reviews in Rolling Stone, WSJ, Chinese newspapers, and on NPR, and reached #1 on the World Charts. This album's a tribute to Shanghai pop music of the ‘30s and ‘40s. Lucas has performed live versions of this material all over the world, including well received concerts in Shanghai during the 2010 Expo Shanghai and also at the Holland Festival in Amsterdam.

In 2013, Lucas performed with his 1930s Chinese pop project, The Edge of Heaven, in a sold-out show at the Fishman Space at BAM with vocalists Sally Kwok and Mo Hai Jing and his group Gods and Monsters. The project was also performed as a trio featuring Lucas, Sally Kwok, and Mo Hai Jing at the 1930 Club in Shanghai. October also saw Lucas performing in Federico García Lorca's "La Casa de Bernarda Alba" at the Gaia Arts Center in Havana.

Lucas began working on a follow-up to his celebrated album The Edge of Heaven with vocalist Feifei Yang and saxophonist Jason Candler in late 2017, including a version of Lucas and Buckley's "Grace." At the annual Moon Festival, at Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Lucas and Yang performed with the 70-piece Asian Cultural Orchestra, including the debut of their duet of "The Moon Represents My Heart." In celebration of the Chinese New Year in February 2018, the new Edge of Heaven trio performed at the Laurie Beechman Theatre. Yang and Lucas also served as judges on CCTV's "Super Baby" talent competition and a documentary about their collaborations is forthcoming on SinoVision.

In the mid-90s Lucas performed with Richard Barone in series of duo shows and live radio broadcasts in which Barone played Mellotron. Barone also guested on lead vocals with Lucas in Gods and Monsters and appears on subsequent albums.

In 2003–2004 Lucas collaborated with Dutch lutist Jozef van Wissem on the Universe of Absence and Diplopia. They have performed live on Dutch national TV together.

In 2007, Lucas collaborated on an album with underground electronic producer James R Hunter's project The Dark Poets, produced by British label manager Stevo Pearce of Some Bizzare Records. The album, Gary Lucas vs the Dark Poets – Beyond the Pale, features an eclectic mixture of moody drum and bass, techno and rock tracks (notably "Prime Time", featuring vocals by Sarah Hilliard and James R. Hunter) as well as many early Lucas tracks and collaborations (including "Procuress from Karmelitska Street" featuring vocalist Pat Fulgoni of Kava Kava and original sketches of songs that went on to be used on Jeff Buckley's Grace album, including "Grace" and "Mojo Pin").

In 2009, Lucas collaborated on a world music collaboration with Indian vocalist Najma Akhtar. Their album RISHTE combines rock, blues, folk, and raga, on Harmonia Mundi/World Village. It was number 4 in the European World Music charts in 2009.

In 2009, he collaborated with Juan Galeano on his album El Peregrino, which debuted April 2010.

In 2010, Lucas collaborated with vocalist Dean Bowman on their "spiritual roots project" and gospel album, "CHASE THE DEVIL". The duo performed an amalgam of Hebrew and African American blues live in the United States and Europe.

In 2013 Lucas performed in several special collaborations in late 2013, including with Mother Falcon and Amanda Palmer, with Richard Mader and Pat Fulgoni as the Ghosts of Prague at Jazz Dock, and with Toni Deszo, deBORT's lead saxophonist, at the Budapest Jazz Club.

In 2014, Lucas released an album called Otherworld on Esoteric Antenna. Otherworld is a collaborative effort with Peter Hammill of Van der Graaf Generator.

In 2014 Fleischerei: Music From Max Fleischer Cartoons, a collaboration between Lucas, Tony Award-nominee Sarah Stiles, and Joe Fiedler, is a musical tribute to Max Fleischer and the jazz and swing scores that accompanied his animated work. Their public debut came at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Cafe in November 2014. The project features Stiles as Betty Boop. An album of the songs was released on February 5, 2015 on Cuneiform Records. The album was cited as one of the best albums of 2016 in DownBeat Magazine.

Lucas has collaborated intermittently with DJ Cosmo (Colleen Murphy) as Wild Rumpus. Having worked together in the Manhattan rave scene, their work focuses on incorporating Lucas's electric guitar work and various other genre influences into electronic dance music. In 2014 the duo released the double-vinyl album Musical Blaze-up on Bitches Brew. Curious Animal gave the LP a seven out of ten, saying "the international sound is the album's ... big defining feature". I House U called Musical Blaze-Up a "rawkus musical mash-up" and the video for lead single "Rock the Joint" was named BBC 6 Music Video of the Week.

In 2015 Lucas's psychedelic world music trio, Pearly Clouds, released their debut album on Discovery Records on March 15, 2015. The project features Hungarian traditional folk vocalist Enikő Szabó and Serbian saxophonist Toni Dezso.

Lucas traveled to England in February 2017 to produce a new album from Ed Laurie. Lucas's celebrated album Rishte with Najma Akhtar was reissued on OkayMusic, rising to #4 on the World Music Charts Europe. Fall 2017 saw the release of the album "Gary and Toni Go Nutz!", a duo recording of songs and improvisation by Lucas and Toni Dezso of Pearly Clouds, on Rare Lumiere and Okay Records. Rokus Kalapis created an animated feature to accompany the album.

In 2018, he opened director Emir Kusturica's long-running Kustendorf Film and Music Festival in Serbia with two live film scores, including the formerly lost Russian fantasy short "Bound By Film" starring Vladimir Mayakovsky and Rene Clair's surrealistic "Entr'acte"; and with Emir Kusturica's Balkan gypsy ensemble The No Smoking Orchestra. Gary returned again to Serbia in July to perform at Kusturica's Bolshoi Classical Music Festival with a third live film score for the famed Russian silent comedy "Chess Fever".

While in Normandy, France in 2019, Lucas recorded a new EP with French/Moroccan singer Yass Boud and producer David Konopnicki, scheduled for release in early 2021.

On July 1, Gary unleashed his latest project LE BEAST CONCRÈTE, a new electronica collaboration with producer/dj David Sisko.

On November 7, GARY LUCAS released a new acoustic duo project on the ZenneZ label featuring award-winning young Dutch acoustic bassist and vocalist PETER WILLEMS entitled DOUBLE DARE VOL. ONE. Gary and Peter met under the auspices of Gary’s old friend Dutch producer Co de Kloet shortly before lockdown and immediately began collaborating and recording in 2020, combining jazz, blues, folk, rock, classical and electronic music. The duo made their official live debut before an audience with a sold-out concert in Maastricht’s Lumiere Cinema, followed by an instore appearance in Hilversum, which was taped for a live broadcast on Co de Kloet’s “CoLive!" program on national Dutch radio NTR. This was followed by a concert at the Parkstad Limburg Theatre in Heerlen. DOUBLE DARE VOL. TWO, focusing on the electric side of their music, will be released digitally on February 7, 2022, followed by a CD and double vinyl release containing both volumes.

Gary closed out the year of 2021 with a national Dutch radio retrospective of his work on Co de Kloet's "Co Live!" program on NTR, and four overseas concerts—solo in Tuscany, solo, and with an all-star ensemble including percussionist Lukas Ligeti in Paris, solo and duo with Peter Willems in the Netherlands, and solo acoustic on December 15 in London at regal Winfield House in Regent's Park. This was a private concert by invitation of Acting US Ambassador to the UK Philip Reeker, similar to a private concert he had arranged for Gary when he was Consul General in Milan a few years ago, where he presented Gary with an Award for Cultural Diplomacy. The year ended with ROCKDELUX, one of the most important music magazines in Spain, selecting THE ESSENTIAL GARY LUCAS as one of the best compilations of the year.

Coming up in 2022, Gary will mount a special Chinese New Year edition of The Edge of Heaven with Feifei Yang at Joe’s Pub on February 1. The World of Captain Beefheart featuring Gary and the fabulous Nona Hendryx has just been tapped to play Bang On a Can’s new Long Play Festival in Brooklyn over the last weekend in April—venue, date and time TBA.

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