ORANGE COUNTY BLUES SOCIETY Infos RANDY LEE HANO

de Bel7 · 27 juin 2013

OC Blues Society Newsletter #11
July 2013

Papa J will be interviewed and perform live on “Laguna Blues” (KX93.5 FM) Friday, June 28 at 7 p.mDon’t Miss It!

The Orange County Blues Society

Interview with Randy Lee Hano
of Crosscut Delux
(appearing at
The Real Blues Festival
of
Orange County 4
on September 8)

OCBS: Randy, you’re a great guitar player, you’ve got a warm personality, you engage with the audience.
RH: Well you meet all these people through Facebook and see them at the gigs. I see you all over Facebook so when I saw you at the gig I thought “I better go and shake hands with him.”
OCBS: You’ve got to love the internet. So Randy, which island are you from?
RH: I’m from Oahu, from the city of Honolulu.
OCBS: I read one of your pages that said you have a Bachelors in Music?
RH: I graduated from the University of Hawaii with a Bachelors with an emphasis in music. It helped me to do a lot more things as well as see things that I wasn’t able to do musically. This helped me and made it easier and easier to understand what I was doing. I moved to Los Angeles to go to the Musicians Institute in Hollywood. I spent most of my life playing rock and roll so when I came to L.A. and attended MI, I just wanted to learn to play jazz and blues. The first person I met who influenced me at MI was Keith Wyatt, who is now plays with The Blasters. He taught a blues class there and this is where I got my blues history from. It’s really weird because I‘ve been listening to the blues for the past 25 years but really didn’t start playing the style until three and a half or four years ago.
OCBS: How old were you when you started playing guitar?
RH: I was actually 16 when I first started playing. I started out playing bass but my Dad said I don’t want you to play bass, I want you to play guitar and sing. He was a musician who played ukulele and he showed me a few chords on the guitar. I was actually a better bass player than a guitar player until I graduated from High School. I bought myself a Mesa Boogie amp and just fell in love with the sound, then I found myself spending 8-10 hours a day practicing. Over two years my playing level just accelerated like crazy.
OCBS: Did you believe that music was going to be your career?
RH: That was my reason for moving to L.A. However lots of wrong turns, wrong choices, choices that I should have gone for that I didn’t go for. So where I’m at right now is if I can grab the opportunity and do it, why not?
OCBS: When did you move to the mainland?
RH: I moved here in 1989. I actually moved twice to LA. The first time I ended up going back home and went back to school and got my degree. I loved the mainland so much on the first round that I needed and wanted to come back.
OCBS: How would you categorize your guitar playing?
RH: I’m influenced by so many different players and so many different styles it’s best just to call me a chameleon. I’ve been told that I play like water because it just flows.
OCBS: Realistically speaking, there are no record labels per se anymore, how does that affect you?
RH: I have a friend who just finished his third album on iTunes, that’s the way to go.
OCBS: What are you playing through?
RH: I like to build my own amps, I have some classic amps but I would rather take the Tweed clones to the gig.
OCBS: What kind of guitars do you play?
RH: G&L Telecaster, Strats, and couple of Les Pauls.
OCBS: Do you have a favorite?
RH: You could call my G&L my favorite.
OCBS: Are you a Stevie Ray Vaughn kind of a guy?
RH: I don’t use 13’s. I do use 10’s, some 11’s and one of my guitars has 12’s. I like to feel the strings like Stevie but I am not that type of guy, Buddy maybe.
OCBS: Is Crosscut Delux the players you usually play with?
RH: Crosscut Delux is actually a fusion of players, we all know each other. We fused together for this particular project because we all know Jeff (Papa J) and most us have played with him in other “project bands” or at jams.
OCBS: It is very incestuous in the music business.
RH: It is, and we all get along together and that’s what’s really nice. A lot of project bands that get put together tend to fall apart but whether Crosscut Delux goes on to other things, we don’t know yet. Richard, Paul and myself all played together under the name of Crews Blues and Paul Crews – the drummer – in another band before that.
OCBS: Not only do they fall apart and come back together but you could actually be playing in two or three bands at a time.
RH: That’s pretty much what ends up happening. I’ve known Richard for the past three to four years, and we both played with Paul in Cadillac Hubie. So yeah, I’m more like a hired gun, but with Crosscut Delux it is a different situation and we don’t know where it’s going to end up, whether it is another project that moves on or not. If we get a lot of positive responses it could go somewhere or if something else comes up we could go our separate ways.
OCBS: Do you have a steady project that you work with?
RH: I really want to put together a project, but it’s finding the right pieces to develop, that’s the thing.
OCBS: Right, you can always find mediocre musicians, it’s finding musicians that are equal or better to challenge your playing that’s tricky.
RH: Right. With Crosscut Delux we have played together and with a number of other people at Blues Jams for the last two – three years so we really know what we want and where we are going musically and it fun. Since we know what we want to do, we get together and do a rehearsal and play out. Like I said I don’t know what the future of Crosscut Delux will be, but it will be interesting to see where it goes. I’d like it to go somewhere.
OCBS: I like what you guys are doing. It feels like you’ve been playing together forever. When I googled you Randy you were all over Google. You had two full pages.
RH: It’s all about getting out there. When you asked me to do the interview I was happy to do that. Usually it’s the singers but Richard and I are the singers.
OCBS: Who are your biggest blues influences?
RH: Magic Sam, I really love his vocals and guitar playing. I love Robben Ford who is jazz and blues based.
OCBS: Is there a time when you really feel like you’re in the zone, connecting with the audience?
RH: For me it’s not so much about connecting with the audience as it is about transmitting the music. It is all about the music and the more you play for people and they like what you are doing, you will connect. Music is the medium, if you connect the more they will come to see you. Now you’ve got the connection before even hitting the very first note.
OCBS: Randy, thanks for taking some time with us for the interview and we lookforward to seeing you at The Real Blues Festival of Orange County 4, Sunday September 8th at Malones Bar and Grill in Santa Ana.