NEWS CATEGORIES

North Dakota musician releases first album, ‘Will’

October 25, 2011

Music is often a collaborative effort. When you think of music performances, you picture several people on stage, all playing their different instruments and contributing their different parts.

But Luke Graner is a symphony in and of himself. He is a one-man rock band, playing all the parts of his music on recordings and on stage. And even when performing alone, his music still represents collaboration and community.

(Photo by Kelly Hagen) Luke Graner in his home studio, where he recorded his first album, "Will."

Graner is a self-employed graphic designer, and he uses this same do-it-yourself attitude in his music through a process called “looping.” Here’s how it works: He will begin a song by laying down a beat on the drums, which his equipment will repeat in a loop. He will continue to add new layers, in percussion, on guitar, adding vocal refrains, then singing on top of the tapestry.

Adding and subtracting, Graner creates a new level of appreciation to the act of watching him perform as he balances all these parts, conducting and coordinating everything into a concise package of revolving sounds.

“I kind of wrote and felt the songs in sort of sounds and landscapes, and not so much in a guitar riff or many guitar riffs or chords,” Graner says. “I’m not a good enough guitar player to be able to have a band and play lead, and be known or seen as a good guitar player or a lead player. I used to be a drummer, so rhythm and melody and harmony have always been my strongest points, so I was like, well, I can stay in time. So maybe I can loop.”

Graner grew up in a musical family in Minot, performing in church and at small-town celebrations across North Dakota. Graner later joined a band, Curious Yello, while in college.

Neal Peterson, one of Graner’s bandmates, says Graner was the glue that brought Curious Yello together.

“At the start of our college years, Luke and our friend, Mike Miller, were looking for a bass player to start a band in Fargo,” Peterson says. “Somehow, with my pawnshop guitar and sub-par musical skills, they thought I was qualified. Luke then recruited our drummer, Jeremy Houser, who was the quarterback for Minnesota State University-Moorhead where we went to school. I didn’t know what we were getting into at the time, but they are some of my fondest memories now.”

As they finished college, though, the band members grew up and grew apart. When Graner moved to Bismarck for an internship in his career field of graphic design, he found himself without a team of collaborators for performing music. So he started doing it all himself.

“I just kind of started messing around with prerecording and certain things, like having beats on a drum machine and on a four-track or whatever,” he says.

Central to Graner’s musical philosophy is the idea of giving, and then getting back, much like the cyclical nature of his songs. On his new album, “Will,” Graner shares seven songs that have been slowly gestating, evolving and changing over the last three years as he’s recorded them and tested them on stage.

“I play live as fast as I possibly can,” Graner says. “As soon as I finish a demo, I start thinking about how I can play it live. Because that’s really where it becomes something.”

The music on “Will” captures all the unique traits and strengths of Graner’s musical talents. “I’m completely biased,” Peterson says, “but I think Luke’s music is truly great. His sound retains certain traditional elements like acoustic guitars and djembe drums, but there’s also some synthetic instrumentation. That dichotomy lends to its distinctive sound.”

And once they’re recorded or played live, they’re not his anymore, Graner says.

“To me, to write a song is a gift,” he says. “It’s like receiving a gift. I feel like I’m receiving a gift. And so, by choosing to go out and play or record it and put it on a CD, I’m essentially just letting it go. And so anybody who goes out and sees live music and original bands is essentially accepting a gift from that band or person.”

Graner is concentrating on the online release of his album, available now at CDBaby.com, Amazon.com and on iTunes. He is planning to release a physical copy of the album soon.

Doing something special for the release falls right in line with the methods and reasons that Graner does his music. He hopes the energy and time he has put into recording his album will sync with the same energy and devotion he has felt from his fans.

“It’s kind of like all the people around town who have continued to come out and listen over and over again to me playing the same songs differently and just basically getting out and hanging out,” he says, “I’d like to have something special for them.”

The special qualities should come easily, based purely on Graner’s unique approach and abilities. Peterson says anyone who buys the CD or goes to see Graner live in concert is going to experience something they won’t find anywhere else.

“Growing up the in the Midwest, I know that it can be a bit of a cultural desert,” he says. “But, when you search hard enough, you can find all kinds of oases. There are some amazing things going on in North Dakota, and Luke Graner is one of them.”

-Kelly Hagen is an arts and entertainment writer for the Great Plains Examiner.