Grant Geissman

Guitarist/composer Grant Geissman is a popular Contemporary Jazz recording artist, with sixteen highly regarded solo albums. Blissfully established these past six years as an independent artist calling his own shots, Grant Geissman has a liberating three-word response to anyone who ever offered their so called expertise about how to make the ideal commercial recording: Bop! Bang! Boom! “Bop!” because the multi-talented guitarist’s wildly eclectic new set on Futurism has swinging bebop tunes. “Bang!” because drummers and percussionists Ray Brinker, Alex Acuna and Brian Kilgore are “banging away” throughout. And “Boom!” because Geissman, 16 albums into a storied solo recording career that began with Good Stuff in 1978, is still exploding with new creative directions and unlimited musical possibilities. Geissman has been exploring such territory since his early days recording and touring with Chuck Mangione—an era which included Geissman’s now iconic electric guitar solo on “Feels So Good,” a 1978 instrumental pop hit Current Biography once called “the most recognized melody since The Beatles’ ‘Michelle.’” The San Jose, California native was in his senior year as a classical guitar major at Cal State Northridge when a mutual friend recommended him for a gig with Mangione. The rest is a long, colorful history of touring and recording that culminated most recently on Geissman’s critically acclaimed 2009 recording Cool Man Cool, which featured the flugelhorn great performing with jazz legend Chick Corea on the Geissman composition “Chuck and Chick.” Over the years, the versatile guitarist has contributed to recordings by hundreds of artists, including Quincy Jones, Burt Bacharach, Brian Wilson, Elvis Costello, Robbie Williams and Michael Feinstein; jazz greats Lorraine Feather, Gordon Goodwin and David Benoit; and early heroes like Van Dyke Parks, Ringo Starr and Klaus Voormann. Geissman and Parks received Annie Award nominations for their musical collaborations on the HBO children’s program “Harold and the Purple Crayon.” A massive Beatles fan growing up and still a collector of rare memorabilia, Geissman was able to fulfill a lifelong dream by working on Ringo’s Ringorama and contributing to a recording and documentary about the life of Voormann, a famed bassist, artist and longtime Beatles intimate. A veteran of hundreds of film and television scores, Geissman currently co-composes music for the top rated CBS sitcoms “Two and a Half Men” and “Mike And Molly.” Geissman includes an extended jazzy take of the Emmy nominated theme to “Two and a Half Men,” which he co-wrote, on his critically acclaimed 2006 album Say That! Geissman brings a wealth of pop rock and jazz influences to his work, including Eric Clapton/Cream, The Beatles, Kenny Burrell, B.B. King, Wes Montgomery, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and even classic 1960s surf guitar music. In the mid-1980s, eight years after making his first album for Concord Jazz, Geissman launched an impressive string of pop and jazz influenced recordings that helped define the contemporary instrumental music of the era and also demonstrated his versatility both as a player and composer. Many of these collections spawned top airplay tracks on the Radio & Records charts: Put Away Childish Toys, Drinkin’ From The Money River, Snapshots, All My Tomorrows, Take Another Look, Flying Colors, Rustic Technology, the compilation CD Reruns, Business as Usual, In With the Out Crowd and There and Back Again, a high resolution DVD audio/video recording celebrating the 25th year of The Grant Geissman Quintet. Apart from his musical career. Geissman is renowned as one of the foremost collectors of MAD Magazine and 1950s E.C. Comics memorabilia. He has authored three definitive books on the subjects: Collectibly MAD (Kitchen Sink Press, 1995), Tales of Terrror! The EC Companion (with Fred von Bernewitz, Gemstone/Fantagraphics, 2000) and Foul Play! The Art and Artists of the Notorious 1950s E.C. Comics! (HarperDesign, 2005). Bop! Bang! Boom! is the third album in a loosely fashioned trilogy which reflects Geissman’s shift to more traditional jazz expressions. The follow-up to Say That! and Cool Man Cool includes amped up ventures into numerous genres that reflect Geissman’s multitude of passions. These include the soul/bossa nova vibe that Quincy Jones explored in the early 1960s (“Q-Tip”); a touch of romantic, Spanish flavored classical guitar (“Un Poco Espanol”); a free jazz, Ravi Shankar-inspired exploration on the Jerry Jones electric sitar (the bold and exotic “Go to the Window”); and the seductive, easy loping “Samba En Menor,” highlighted by Brian Scanlon’s flute and Tom Ranier’s spirited piano. Just as the album title clues the listener in on Geissman’s overall vision and mindset, the names of many of the tunes draw the listener deep into each experience. The swinging guitar and bop drum and percussion grooves on the improvisation-rich and slightly abstract “The Singularity” illuminates a concept by scientist and futurist Ray Kurzweil that states that by 2045, human intelligence will be surpassed by computer intelligence. Those who remember a time when “Mission: Impossible” was more than a Tom Cruise film franchise will gravitate to the mystery and 5/4 odd meter of “Good Morning, Mr. Phelps.” The quirky, Cajun-Zydeco influenced “$25 Stella” rolls in the spirit of “Grandfather’s Banjo,” a delightfully quirky piece from Say That! on which Geissman played his grandfather’s five string banjo. On this tune, which features a unique swirl of two accordions, tuba and washboards, he plays a 1966 Stella acoustic guitar, one of the three identical $25 instruments his grandfather purchased at Sears so there would be guitars to play at his house. Geissman jams on a series of cool electric guitars (from the Valley Arts strat to the Paul Reed Smith 305 and Gibson ES-335) on the album’s three blues-influenced tunes: the scorching jazz-rocker “Texas Shuffle” (fashioned as a guitar trio showcase featuring fellow guitar greats Larry Carlton and Albert Lee); the simmering slow blues “Take Yer Time,” featuring “Two and a Half Men” co-creator Chuck Lorre on a 1958 Les Paul gold top and the show’s co-composer Dennis C. Brown on the Fender “Jeff Beck” model guitar and on harmonica; and “Off The Grid,” the booming jam session that closes the set, featuring Tom Scott’s fiery alto sax and Jim Cox’s manic Hammond B-3 swagger. “My decision to start writing and recording in a more traditional jazz vein on Say That! came after a several year period of soul searching to figure out what I wanted to do and what kind of music would mean something to me,” says Geissman. “I started listening again to the classic Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Smith and Horace Silver albums I loved growing up and began to appreciate even more fully the way they balanced great melodies with jazz improvisations. That balance became the basis of the albums I’ve recorded over the past six years. The key to making meaningful music is for me is to not limit myself stylistically. I actually can’t envision writing an album where every track sounds the same. One of the reasons I created my own label, Futurism, was so that I could explore anything I wanted—which to me is what an artist is supposed to do. I don’t know what happens after Bop! Bang! Boom!, it might be completely different. It’s not about having a master plan, but about writing and recording music that excites and inspires me.” Guitarist/composer/author/collector/Renaissance man, and stuff like that...