JEFFREY GAINES  Pennsylvania’s Original Voice

 

By Crazy John Kerecz

 

Singer/songwriter and musician Jeffrey Gaines brings with him wherever he goes a unique, original voice.  Born and raised in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as a teenager Gaines began singing and playing guitar in several local garage bands covering The Who, The Kinks, and The Jam.  Gaines was offered the singer slot for a New York rock & roll band, but turned it down to move to Philadelphia, where he signed with Chrysalis Records in 1990.  His self-titled 1992 debut, Jeffrey Gaines, was the first of his five studios and one live release’s.  The album garnered four stars from The Philadelphia Inquirer, and kick started his career.  He has performed his original compositions live on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, VH-1, Friday Night Videos and A&E's Breakfast with the Arts, and has toured with artists including Tracy Chapman, Sting, Shawn Colvin, Edwin McCain, The Bacon Brothers and Stevie Nicks. Gaines' sets of original material occasionally include covers of songs by artists as diverse as Elvis Costello, The Monkees, Traffic and Roberta Flack. Presently Jeffrey is actively performing, and I caught up with him after one of his shows, the following is some of that conversation:

CJ:  When you started out you played to empty rooms. Then people heard about you from the press and they realized they liked your stuff, but it was the same stuff that you were always doing. 

 

Gaines:  Yeah, that blew my mind.  And that was my first brush with that intangible, weird energy of perceived fame.  Perceived fame is like - prior to my record coming out and being legitimized by other acts that I went on tour with or being reviewed my multiple stats in Rolling Stones or something like that.  I played that exact same set to tables and chairs and then all of sudden a perceived fame made the curiosity happen and people were like, man this guy has been legitimized by the world so that means it must be good.  Let’s go down and check him out.   I use to laugh to myself and say, man you had me in your backyard every Friday night.

 

CJ:  They always say you have to go away to become famous.

 

Gaines:  I think that might be the case though too.  You've got to actually prove it elsewhere.  I‘ve been proving it for years now.  Looking back now, 20 years I’ve have been performing in front of people professionally and 15 actually with albums out in stores.  Impressing them and keeping it going, I put 6 albums out.  Who knows what’s next. 

 

  

CJ:  During your career you have done your best not to get pigeonholed, people labeled you an acoustic act so you then played with an electric guitar to show them that you could do different stuff. 

 

Gaines:  Yeah, I started playing solo acoustic – in the 80’s when I was joining bands, I was a front man and I didn’t even play guitar, people just had me as the singer.  So, there is a whole performance element that I use to do that I wanted to quickly incorporate.  Before it wasn’t shown or it would be too late to be shown, so my 2^nd record I just made all the songs that I could have made acoustic and I just played them on electric and just opened up myself to that tour, the 94 tour, and got to play to a lot of colleges and a young group of people with more energy, more fun; took the band out live and we did a bunch of TV.  It wouldn’t have been exciting with me just me playing solo on Conan O’Brien; we had a fun young show, the band was rocking with drums and bass.  You got to keep on moving, keep on being diversified so you learn something new each time. 

 

CJ:  I know you are great at getting out there and trying to play other instruments, although you really normally don’t play them. You just get out there and do it because that expands you.

 

Gaines:  Don’t be too proud, you have to make mistakes to learn stuff and sometimes people get such an ego that they become stagnant.  It’s almost like I am too cool.  I mean just like taking off of music right, now say take up snow boarding, roller blading, whatever - try it, do it, it’s like I can’t fall down because I’m too cool.  Well then you never will do it and you will never have learned it and you would not even have known that you could have liked it and it could have lead your world and your life down this kind of path. 

 

Same with music, when I’m in the studio and you get an idea and you’re like, "What’s that instrument over there?", because sometimes studios have some things in house, and you’re like "What is this thing?" Well, I’ve been fooling with it and not afraid to fool with it.  And ya' know after a couple of days sitting there with it I’m recording a track with the damn thing that I never saw, and it’s on your record - you just got to be open to it.  It’s like a paint box, man, you shouldn’t even have any limits, you are the only one that is limiting yourself. 

 

CJ:  Very, very true, I believe that. Hey, I’ll let you get going.  Is there anything you would like to say to your fans in closing? 

 

Gaines:  Oh man, I love you, you know I love you, right!  Ha~ I just want to say everyone - stay healthy and happy.

 

  For more information go to http://www.jeffreygaines.com/