Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Jason Falkner drawing attention from music industry

Opener for Travis concert has accomplished much creatively

Jason Falkner opens for Travis at 8 p.m. today at the Hard Rock Hotel.

You may not know who Jason Falkner is, even though more famous virtuosos in the music industry keep hiring him. Falkner plays bass and drums on singer Beck's next album. Modern-rock's White Stripes just covered one of his songs. And Falkner toured as the bassist for the avant-garde band Air for a year and a half.

Falkner has accrued many die-hard fans on his own, by playing all the instruments on his own masterpiece of a solo album in 1999, "Can You Still Feel?" Although, other fans noticed him back when he was a member of the late, Beatles-inspired bands Jellyfish and the Grays.

Falkner has accomplished much creatively. And yet, at 35, he has finally given up any hopes of making it big on a major record label. He will be selling his own EPs tonight at the Hard Rock Hotel, when he opens for the alternative Britrock band Travis.

"The record business has totally forsaken me. So I finally said, `Screw you,' to everybody. It took me a long time to do that emotionally and financially," Falkner says. "So I'll just take my $9 per record, instead of 35 cents."

Falkner says his first real financial success was probably his stint in Air.

"That was the first time I ever made a living as a musician, because they were paying me," he says.

In 2001, Sony signed Falkner to arrange, perform, produce and engineer a lullaby album called "Bedtime With the Beatles: Instrumental Versions of Classic Beatles Songs." But that didn't make him famous, rich or distinguished, beyond a bit of press on National Public Radio.

He's planning this year to release a new album on a boutique label, maybe Beggars Banquet, Sub Pop or V2. Once again, he's playing all the instruments. And he thinks he understands how he should market his music by himself.

"It has to be marketed like a password. Like: `It's not for everybody, but if you don't understand it, maybe there's something wrong with you.' That's how I've always wanted to market," he says with a chuckle, "without pissing people off and making them feel stupid."

The band Air was the perfect example of that kind of secret society.

"That's a band that was literally like this underground password. Before I even heard them," he says, "it was, like, `I know it's good, just because of the quality of people telling me about Air, and this intangible buzz about them.' "

Falkner has already gone through buzz similar to that. The Grays formed almost against their will, with labels offering record deals "sight unseen," he says.

In 2000, Falkner joined with friends who had been in Jellyfish to start a group called TV Eyes. It plays synthesizer pop-rock that harks back to the 1980s, a la Berlin and New Order. TV Eyes has MP3s on its eponymous Web site, and yet Falkner now realizes that people will think the band is merely joining the fad of 1980s-inspired music.

"It just sucks now, because no matter what you say -- when you started it, when you finished it -- we just totally look like band-wagoners," Falkner says.

Falkner says he was signed up to play bass on Beck's next album, but then got more than he bargained for.

"This was a funk endeavor. And I was doing a lot of Minimoog bass, like really, really Stevie Wonder funk stuff, and also some guitar and keyboards. But then, I came in and replaced Harvey Mason from the Head Hunters on drums. (Replacing) someone as revered as him kind of legitimizes you," Falkner says, "especially to be playing some hard funk."

It's easy to understand why musicians want to work with Falkner. His "Can You Still Feel?" album is full of fresh, singalong pop harmonies and hooks in the vein of the Beatles and the Beach Boys, but without being a rip-off disc. And it has one stroke of bravery after another. The song "Holiday" plays like a never-ending escalator of Beach Boys choruses. And in "All God's Creatures," Falkner performs an "intentional car crash" of Liberace piano that runs into crunchy guitars.

"When I was coming up with that, I was laughing my ass off," Falkner says. "Originally, it was a rocking guitar solo, but then I started doing this Liberace stuff, and I thought, `This is unique!' "

While opening for Travis, Falkner -- who is a distant cousin of writer William Faulkner, if you were wondering -- plans to play solo electric guitar.

"Basically, I jump around like I have a band," he says. "I spaz out. I did that with Alanis, like, three years ago. I did a week in front of 20,000 people every night by myself. Actually the bigger the audience, the easier it is, because you can't see people's expression. It just looks like a mad painting in velvet. There's no feeling. There's no guy in front of you with his arms folded, like, `Entertain me.' "

Falkner says when he tours with a band again, he will make them rehearse for a month before doing a show. But he claims he's not a jerky perfectionist.

"I don't tell people what to wear. I don't do a Lenny Kravitz," he says, "who to me is, like, the biggest kind of tyrant, who is like, `Hey man, just pretend you're in a play and put on these bell-bottoms.' I just want it to feel like a rock band."