Kolumbo (Interview)

Today we’re listening to Kolumbo, an American keyboardist and composer based in Brooklyn. We discovered his music in the great Dinner Music newsletter. The man behind Kolumbo, Frank LoCrasto, grew up in Texas outside of Dallas and started playing a Casio keyboard at age five. He moved to New York for college in 2001 and has resided in Brooklyn since 2002. In the past couple years he’s put out exotica-inspired music, in the vein of contemporaries Molly Lewis, John Carroll Kirby, and The Sweet Enoughs. Sandy Legs, which came out in September, is a pacifying lounge LP, recorded on an 8-track Otari machine in LoCrasto’s apartment. We’re also playing his 2022 LP, Gung Ho, which is a little funkier and incorporates some more orchestral flourishes. A conversation with Frank follows the streaming links.

Sandy Legs - Kolumbo (38m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal

Gung Ho - Kolumbo (47m, basically no vocals – some “La”s on track 2)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal

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What's your earliest memory of music?

My father is a bass player, so I remember him playing around the house. Also my parents had a humble vinyl collection and I remember gazing at the covers. My dad is a huge Jaco [Pastorius] fan, so he would put on that first self titled Jaco record, also Heavy Weather by Weather Report, and some Tower of Power records too. 

Tell us about growing up in Texas and how that experience bears on your music.

I grew up in a suburb called Garland just outside of Dallas. There's not really anything going on there, kind of a boring, typical suburban Texas town. A lot of football, bbq, pickup trucks and queso. My family joined the Methodist church down the street where I made my first friends. There was a lot of bike riding and swimming, we were outside all the time. My parents gifted me a casio at the age of five that I really enjoyed playing, so my mother put me in piano lessons. Of course after a few months when it got hard, I stopped practicing. But I continued to noodle around on the casio and a few years later, my parents gifted me a nicer, bigger casio, less of a toy with better sounds. I really loved it, and around that time my dad started showing me some basic stuff he could play. Boogie woogie, some jazz standards, and since I started learning how to read music before I stopped lessons, he introduced me to the Real Book. For those unfamiliar with what a Real Book is, it was an unpublished book of jazz standards and modern jazz compiled by students at the Berklee School of Music in the seventies. In most places around America, if you wanted one, there was always a guy who sold them out of the trunk of his car. You couldn't buy it in a store as it was basically illegal because of publishing and copyright laws, but I think that's changed. But we had one in the house, and I started learning some of the tunes in there, mostly Ellington. “Take the A Train,” “Don't Get Around Much Anymore,” “Satin Doll” – tunes like that. I eventually got back into lessons at 10 and scored my first gig through my grandmother. I played in a tea shop inside an antique mall in Plano every Saturday from 12-2pm, and got paid $20 plus tips! It was a great experience. This eventually led to attending Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet in Dallas for high school and onwards to NYC. 

What were the artists and albums that you listened to that pointed the way for your music as Kolumbo?

As Kolumbo is exotica adjacent, I really leaned into that genre. I especially love Martin Denny's Quiet Village, Arthur Lyman's Taboo, and Les Baxter's Caribbean Moonlight. But I also like some library musicians from the 50s/60s that made Exotica records like Roger Roger and Nino Nardini. Korla Pandit of course is a big one, so is Dick Hyman. I love Henry Mancini and his choices for orchestrating, like layering strings with organ, or using multiple flutes in a block chord form to play melodies, almost like George Shearing would at the piano. I love Raymond Scott too, his jazz group as well as his synth music.

Where does the name Kolumbo come from?

It's an underwater volcano in the Aegean Sea next to Santorini. I initially was going to go with Colombo, which is a city in Sri Lanka. But while reading about it, I discovered Kolumbo. It was way more tiki sounding, being an underwater volcano and spelled with a "K". Most people immediately think of Peter Falk which of course makes sense. It was a great show!

Tell us about making Sandy Legs – what gear and instruments did you use?

My right hand man, Robin MacMillan, who helped produce, engineer, and played drums and percussion, came to NYC from LA. We recorded the whole record at my apartment in Brooklyn to an 8 track Otari 1/2" machine. Everything was mono. We recorded the basics live, usually a piano or a fender rhodes, bass, drums, and some percussion. Drums were summed down to channel 1, percussion on 2, bass on channel 3, piano on 4, or something like that. Then flute, vibes, marimba, guitar, keyboards, and more percussion were overdubbed. In order to facilitate overdubs to use as much space as possible on the tapes, Robin and I drew these flow charts out. Tracks 1-8 were written down the left side of the page, and the song form was written across the top. We then drew lines across from left to right and up and down to create a grid to see where there was space on the tape to work. Albeit a little stressful doing punches, but we got so much more laid down than I ever would've imagined. Once everything was tracked, we transferred the tapes to digital and Robin mixed it in LA.

How do you like Brooklyn?

I love Brooklyn, and the city as a whole so much. I moved to the city in 2001 for college, and in January 2002 made the move to Brooklyn. I grew into an adult here, I have a lot of friends here, got married here, and have a great living situation. I've seen so much amazing music and met so many incredible musicians. I still meet cats who have lived here as long as I have or longer that I somehow never crossed paths with. There's so many little scenes and pockets and people doing really cool shit. NYC is thriving and artists are still moving here.

How do you find new music these days?

Usually in record stores. Dollar bins a lot of the time. Bandcamp is a good place too. I have Spotify and it recommends cool stuff from time to time, but I also don't like being the victim of an algorithm. I'll hear that same song in a coffee shop or bar and part of me is like "it's cool this weird obscure music is being discovered and played in places like this", but the algorithm part kinda sucks.

Name an underrated artist from the past 50 years.

Ok I gotta think on this a second because it would have to be 1974 onward, and most of what I listen to is pre 1974... William Aura and Ryo Kawasaki come to mind. The English duo Woo, I love that Gene Dunlap record "It's Just the Way I Feel". Definitely Charlie Megira.

What are you working on next?

Touring for 2024 is wrapping up here in a few weeks, then I'll be working on Broadway a bit during the winter subbing on Romeo and Juliet. During that period, I'd like to start work on a solo album, and plan on writing a new Kolumbo record as well. Eric Johnson from Fruit Bats and I have been planning on doing some writing together in December. Kolumbo will be playing in Brooklyn at Bar Lunatico on November 29th which will probably be our last show of the year. Tell your friends!