Life & Work with Claude Mccan

Today we’d like to introduce you to Claude Mccan.

Hi Claude, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I was born in the small ranching village of McFaddin, which is outside of Victoria, Texas. I worked as a cowboy on the ranch during the summers until I finished high school. I mention this because this job is where I learned the cowboy work ethic that I have adhered to my whole career in music. This consists of getting to your location early and not leaving until the job is done, as well as not asking anyone on your team to do any chore that you would not do yourself.

I started taking piano lessons at age six. My parents rented a piano or organ for me depending on what kind of deal they could get. This meant that the instruments and the teachers were always changing which was actually good as I learned both instruments quite well. In 1976 I moved back to Texas from New Orleans and settled in Austin to attend UT. After class one day, I went to the bulletin board at Dobie Mall and saw an ad that said, “You can be black, you can be white, just make sure you can play it right- looking for musicians to start a reggae band”. I got the position as a keyboard player and singer in one of the first reggae bands in Texas and started playing around Austin clubs right away. In the last few years of the 70s the punk/new wave movement hit Austin and everything changed quickly. I joined a band called the Radio Planets and started incorporating electronic and synthetic sounds in my setup. This has remained my specialty as a keyboard player straight through to the present day. The Radio Planets were a popular band but the New Wave scene moved very fast and by 1981, we were no more.

My next band was a New Wave reggae band called Pressure and we were quite successful regionally and were traveling non-stop. The group won the Austin Chronicle’s best reggae band award three years in a row and best EP for our eponymously titled record (vinyl of course). In the mid-80s, I left the group to form my own 80s synthpop band How to Kiss. I kept playing throughout the 90s in reggae, blues and funk bands, as well as starting to compose electronic music under the name Claude 9, which is still my stage moniker. When people ask me what kind of music I play, my answer is “all the Groovy kinds!” I can’t stick to just one genre because I get bored.

I had a lot of Electronic and House music releases since then and played in long-running live hip hop act Afrofreque. I have written a lot of material for most of the acts I have played with over the years and that is what really keeps me going. I own Claude 9 Studios, which is mostly an electronic production studio with a huge collection of mad scientist instruments and “toys”. My main concentrations are my group with guitarist Fumihito Sugawara called 35MM, who recently released our second album on Ropeadope records entitled “Heartache is Such a Dirty Business”. I keep a steady release schedule of electronic music as Claude 9 and will be releasing a new ambient album soon that was recorded during Covid lockdown.

Lots of musicians these days play with “tribute” acts as their bread and butter and I am no exception. I currently play keyboards and sing in Bob Marley group Hail Marley and David Bowie tribute band Supercreeps. Over the last five years, I have also done music for dance and Soundpainting shows with the Andrea Ariel Dance Theatre and I am getting ready for a show with this dance group featuring Claude 9 music later this year.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
When you are a young musician and you find yourself in a band with a good-sized fan base, you sometimes get it into your head that you can leave this group and do just as well on your own or with a new act. Unless you are in a huge hit group, this rarely works out. Eventually, you learn that success in this business has a lot to do with luck and timing. You also learn to appreciate how the interaction with your bandmates is what makes your music really strong. Power struggles between the members is what leads to bands breaking up and as you mature, you try to avoid these issues as much as possible.

Sometimes you need to know when it is time to move on to other projects, and this is difficult because there is such an emotional connection between group members. I am still dealing with this all of the time, but the Covid lockdown has actually given me a lot of insight. I have spent so much time and energy doing live shows, but this takes away from my creative time. Now I am more focused on creating and recording now than I have been before. I am not leaving the stage behind entirely though.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I have never been what’s known as a “technical” keyboardist or singer. I tend to focus on the big picture in the music and add colors that I believe are most needed. As a singer, I focus on emotional commitment to the song’s story. I always give my live audience a show: I dress freaky and move with the groove. One of my trademarks is the keyboard tongue solo. I play the keys with my tongue and I have never heard of anyone else that does that.

Although I am proficient on piano and organ, I always try to bring the musical texture into the modern age by using electronic sounds and atmosphere. This was rare in Austin when I began doing this but is more widespread now. I am known as much for my sound programming as my playing but I still do my best to make it musical as well.

What matters most to you?
The most important thing for me is to always be learning something- a new type of music, new technology or skill. If I am doing something I already know how to do well, I start to lose interest. With the extra time on my hands lately, I have been taking an intense course on mastering, which was an aspect of music and recording that had always been sort of a mystery to me. I will be offering this as another service in my studio soon. One thing about music, especially electronic music, is that there is more to learn than you will ever have time for and the technology is changing at a very rapid rate. No time to get bored and that is of paramount importance to me.

Contact Info:

• Email: claude956@gmail.com
• Website: www.claude9.com https://www.35mmatx.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/claude956/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Claude9Studios https://www.facebook.com/35mmband
• SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/claude9
• Other: https://fumihitosugawaraclaudenine.bandcamp.com/

Image Credits
Charles “Chuck” Wright photography for live music shots