Gray Matters

[January 9th, 2008]

Based solely on context clues—the well-fitting, deep-red sport coat; the smooth blasts of trumpet and dark, eerie keyboard sounds; the black derby cap and stoic stage presence; collaborators like country chanteuse Shelley Short and folk charmer Laura Gibson—you’d never guess Cory Gray considers himself “not very cool.” But that’s just how the Carcrashlander frontman-songwriter describes himself when discussing the creation of his self-titled solo debut.

The first release from San Francisco’s Parks and Records, Carcrashlander graces the label’s website alongside P&R artists’ favorite parks (Gray’s is Salt Point State Park in Northern California) and such eco-friendly advice as: “When boiling water, be sure to put a lid on the pot [to] save energy.”

“It’s so cute and dorky and it kinda fits me,” Gray says of the label, which his friends Mimi and Jon Fee (also of ambient-psych group the Rum Diary) started in an effort to combine “the great outdoors and music.” Though Gray catches himself saying proceeds go to “bullshit” (read: ecological charities), he sounds legitimately proud to be involved. “[The website] has ‘green tips!’” he gushes.

Gray’s self-proclaimed dorkiness doesn’t end there. “This is really cheesy,” he says, “but as a kid, I was in all these piano competitions and...I really loved it.” And though he humbly claims he “can’t play trumpet worth a shit,” the 29-year-old Santa Rosa native has made quite a few connections thanks to his brass ’n’ keys chops. A longtime session player for local studio Type Foundry (which counts M. Ward, the Decemberists and Spoon among its clients), Gray has also played with Desert City Soundtrack and Norfolk & Western (whose frontman, Adam Selzer, runs Type Foundry)—not to mention an offer he received in high school to join the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies (“So lucky I didn’t do that,” he reflects).

“Everything relates back to Type Foundry, doesn’t it?” Gray asks, recalling a tour-packed 2007. Besides hitting the road twice with Gibson, Gray also made several trips to Australia. “This guy, Darren Hanlon, came in to record at Type Foundry,” he explains. “He liked the horn stuff on the Norfolk record[s], so he had me come in. He was telling me about how he wanted to do his next record at this silent movie theater in the middle of the country in Queensland. And I was like, ‘Oh, dude, that sounds amazing.’ He called me up two weeks later and [said], ‘Hey, did you really wanna do that? I’ll fly you down to Australia and...we’ll record [it].’”

In between trips to the Southern Hemisphere, Gray managed to help Chicago musician David Singer score the soundtrack to the now-on-Broadway musical August: Osage County, and put down a strong debut of somber piano-led noise-folk under the Carcrashlander moniker. “I feel like it’s sort of an accident,” says Gray. “I know a lot of people who are like, ‘Alright, I wanna make a record in this style,’ and I never really do that. I get into my weird zone and I go record. These songs I’m performing now...they’re all just little poops of some weird times that I’ve had. And they’re all different poops. All in different places in different times with different people.”

“I’m really excited to work on my own stuff for a while,” he says of settling back into Portland life, where he cooks at the Bijou Cafe and plays regularly as part of jazz-pop outfit Graves. But he also unabashedly proclaims a love of touring, which he’s done since high school. “First, I studied [classically], but I wasn’t quite diligent enough,” Gray admits. “I studied jazz, and I couldn’t hang with all the wankers. Then, to make matters worse, I joined a ska band and went on tour. [That] was an eye-opening experience for me. I was like, ‘This is what I’m doing.’”

“You have to be the right kind of person to go on tour and love it,” he continues, reminiscing about a moment trekking through North Dakota with Desert City Soundtrack: “We were touring our asses off, cooking cans of beans on a propane stove in negative-7-degree weather in the van, and we were having the time of our lives. There’s something you can get from that kind of lifestyle that you can’t get from anywhere else,” he adds. “I love it. A lot of people [only] go on tour to promote their records.” In between bursts of laughter, he says, “I’ve been going on tour without a record for a long time!”