David Garfield is a versatile LA based keyboardist that has gone beyond the bounds of most musicians. He has been at the helms of two instrumental supergroups, started his own record label, and was the ringleader for one of the most involved Tribute Project to date.
Creatchy Records, Garfield's record label is currently riding a string of strong releases which include his solo material, that of the band Karizma, Michael Landau's solo release "Tales From the Bulge", and Los Lobotomys.
David took a few minutes from his busy day to chat on the Fusion Show and discuss his brilliant career and the monstrous project Tribute To Jeff.
I have a stack of CDs that you are involved in.
- Well, that's a lot of music we've been working on over the years and we keep doing it. We have a bunch of new things coming out this year.
You always seem to be involved in monstrous bands. You've been with Karizma for about 25 years.
- When I came out to LA back in 1974 from Missouri, I'm a mid-westerner. When I got out here, my ambition was to play with all the great musicians and to start my own band. The concept that I had was Karizma was going to be an instrumental band like with five people, everybody was going to be very interesting and very dynamic soloists. We started out and played locally in LA and then we put our first record out, boy it must have been nine years later.
Karizma seems to be a giant revolving door, with only the best musicians.
- (Laughs) I know. Actually the band is playing out a lot, and we have more gigs lined up. It's been a renaissance out here for live music. A lot of people are playing out. Larry Carlton just played the New Baked Potato, as well as Abe Laboriel and his son. A lot of the musicians, Scott Henderson, Mike Miller, are all playing at one place of another.
It's funny you mention Abe Laboriel. Abe spent a few years living in Cleveland Heights, and you have family here in Cleveland Heights as well.
- Yeah! What do you mean Abe lived there?
Abe spent about two years here.
- I didn't know that. I'll have to ask him about that. Well, I like Cleveland Heights, I've spent time there and I have my sister, nephew, and brother-in-law there. Tonight we are playing at the Baked Potato here in Los Angeles, which is an original spot for fusion. Tonight Michael Landau's playing. Tonight we're not playing as Karizma, we're playing as David Garfield and Friends. When we do the Karizma gigs, we play only Karizma music, which is more all original music that we have written. When we do the other gigs, we do stuff that other people have wrote.
You were the main force behind A Tribute To Jeff Porcaro, which was a disc with over 75 big-name musicians.
- Well, thank you. It was a big project. It was the biggest I've ever been involved in. It was really an awesome gathering of musicians because Jeff Pocaro was the drummer of Toto. Before they started Toto, he was one of the most popular and sought after drummers in LA. He played with Larry Carlton and was a member of Steely Dan when he was 19 as well as playing on all the Boz Scaggs hits. When the project started out, there were 20 people we were going to work with. It turned into 75.
How did it end up being 75 different musicians?
- Well, I started by making a list of people I thought were appropriate to perform on this. That was based around drummers. In calling up the musicians, I had basically two questions. Either pick a song that you want to do that has some connection to Jeff, or pick some kind of a drum beat, or groove and we'll base a tune around that. As we started to put together the band, I'd run into people and they'd say they wanted to do something. One day I got a call from Jeff's wife and she said she received a letter from Richard Marx and he wants to be involved in this. I also spoke to Don Henley and he wants to sing on it.
It really painted you into a corner. You had to put everyone on it.
- Exactly. We just kept doing and doing until we got to a point where we had 13 songs, like 69 minutes worth of music, every track is filled up, we can't do any more. We got to a point where that was it. You know, we video taped all the sessions on home video. Some day I'm going to put those together.
What's up with Los Lobotomys? What a band that is.
- Right now we are on a break as half of the band is in Toto, which is Simon Phillips and Steve Lukather, and the other half of the band is John Pena and myself. John and I are busy, we work together a lot. We write together, we produce together, he plays a lot of the gigs live with me. When we get together to do Lobotomys is when Toto is off the road and not in the studio.
Lobotomys needs to put out another live record.
- You think so?
Absolutely. I'm officially pushing.
- We're going to be recording it live.
Explain your record label, Creatchy Records.
- There was a tremendous interest from Japan in the fusion music we were doing in LA, and what fusion was, was a lot of the younger musicians, Lee Ritenour and Abe Laboriel, musicians like that. They came up in LA as session players, but the like to play out and they're jazz music was not the traditional jazz music that the older generation in Japan supports. The kids in Japan went crazy for the fusion music. It was very popular in Japan, so around that time I was able to get a record contract in Japan. I was not able to get one in the states. I had gotten very close several times. Randy, I've been inside many offices, put out a lot of tapes. I got my first record deal offered to me by a Japanese company in 1983. After three records for Karizma, guitarist Michael Landau became very busy, touring with Joni Mitchell, and was kind of out of the picture. Lukather, who was a good friend of Landau, started coming down, had wanted to play with us. He was playing with us at the Baked Potato. That was when Los Lobotomys was born. Guys like David Sanborn would sit in. It became quite a happening thing. Marcus Miller and one time Eric Clapton came down, and Sheila E. At that time, the Japanese people I was working with at the time wanted to start a whole label and they wanted the first two discs to be a Karizma and a Los Lobotomys cd. They saw that there was more than one band and they saw the potential. We made a deal and we started the Creatchy label. Basically, the records never came out in the states. What we've done, by popular demand over the last five years is we started releasing the catalog one by one over the years. I believe we have 11 titles out now.
With the fact that some of the releases mentioned were extremely difficult and expensive to obtain, it is good to know that they have become domestic discs available at local record stores. Tribute To Jeff is available on Zebra Records.
Garfield's down to earth disposition and ability to communicate to audiences makes live shows like a party. He talks to people between sets and after the gigs. The show that I saw in LA was recorded at the Baked Potato and was burned onto CD in very limited numbers. Perhaps Karizma or Lobotomys will travel outside LA so that more than the land of plastic surgery and fake breasts will be able to share in the adventure!
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