Three Questions for Kramer

The producer and songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who goes by the name of Kramer had a streak, in the eighties and nineties, of selecting and developing for his label Shimmy-Disc albums by some of the most influential bands of the period (such as Daniel Johnston, Ween, and King Missile, to name but a few) as well as producing seminal recordings by Galaxie 500, Half Japanese, Low, Royal Trux, Urge Overkill, Palace Brothers, Pussy Galore, and on and on. So influential was Kramer’s production style, that he practically patented a certain approach to reverb that was all his own, however widely imitated by others. He also wrote for and was the musical director of the performance art band Bongwater, with actress Ann Magnuson, and wrote and performed with Penn Jillette and with outsider songwriters like Jad Fair, Paleface, and Danielson Familie. His most recent album, under the moniker Let It Come Down, Songs We Sang in Our Dreams, released on vinyl this month from Shimmy-Disc (in partnership with Joyful Noise), is a collaboration with vocalist Xan Tyler, and like all things Kramer it is luminous, spooky, psychedelic, genreless, heartfelt, and very smart. In short, if there was a creative and uncompromising musical movement in the last forty years of independent music, Kramer either played in it, or knew and later collaborated with the exemplars of the form. He has passed from jazz to free improv to psychedelia and show tunes and Brill Building (with Bill Frisell) and back again. He knows everyone, but more than knowing them, he can see into the singularity and importance of a great variety of musicians, likewise into their work. Like a sort of indie rock Cassandra, he seems to be doomed to understand the greatness of all this work without being able to profit outlandishly from his insight, which only makes his testamentary remarks more acute. I’d long awaited a moment when I could pigeonhole Kramer for an interview, and last year the moment finally arrived—through my admiration of the production work he did on the songs of a friend of mine, Emily Rodgers. When the time came to conduct the interview below, I had been stockpiling the questions for years. Little did I know that Kramer was so open and so discursive that I could manage an entire interview with a minimum of intervention of any kind. Nevertheless, as I think the following pages will indicate, a life story can easily be undertaken, or a portion thereof, with just three questions. With any luck I will someday get a chance to ask him a few more.