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Former My Dear Disco guitarist finding own sound
Theo Katzman returns to Foundry, this time as frontman
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Posted: Thursday, February 18, 2010 12:00 am
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Updated: 9:14 pm, Tue Nov 15, 2011.
By JEREMY D. BONFIGLIO - H-P Features Writer
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SOUTH HAVEN - When Theo Katzman was asked to learn Whitney Houston's "My Love Is Your Love" for a wedding gig last summer, he had no idea it would become part of his regular set.
"I was working on the arrangement, and I was like, 'Man, this is an amazing song,'" Katzman says by telephone from his home in Ann Arbor.
"I've been playing it at my solo shows, and I taught it to the band the other day. Everybody was like, 'Yeah, this is sweet.'"
These days when Katzman references "the band" he isn't talking about My Dear Disco, the electro-pop group he helped form alongside Tyler Duncan and Christian Carpenter while they were students at the University of Michigan. Katzman recently left My Dear Disco to focus on his own songwriting and budding career as a solo artist and frontman.
"Everybody in My Dear Disco sort of raised the commitment level and are doing some really amazing stuff," says Katzman, who performs Friday with drummer John Cassidy and bass player Andrew Kratzat at Foundry Hall in South Haven. "They are touring the West Coast. They recently were named artist of the month for BMI, which is huge. In a way, I'm stepping back because of that momentum. For me, it meant I couldn't put in the time for my own thing. It's a hard decision to make because there's so much success with My Dear Disco, and I do love it, but I just couldn't be in two places at once."
Katzman, Duncan and Carpenter first formed the band Toolbox, the Duncan-led musical endeavor that created experimental tracks by using Irish bagpipes as the lead instrument and a laptop to mix bass music and techno drum beats. Toolbox grew into a sextet when guitarist Robert Lester, drummer Mike Shea, and keyboardist Joey Dosik joined the group, but it was the addition of the band's seventh member, vocalist Michelle Chamuel, in 2007 that changed both the musical direction and name of band.
"I was 19 when My Dear Disco formed," Katzman says. "We were all there studying to be professional musicians and suddenly we were professional musicians. I just barely had my college thing together, but Tyler had a lot of experience gigging. He really pushed us and once everyone was together we were hustling gigs. By end of our four years we were at this amazing point where we took it on the road. It was awesome."
My Dear Disco, with its blend of pop, techno, rock, and funk, released a self-titled EP in 2007. The band's first full-length LP, "DanceThink," produced by Grammy-nominated engineer Mark Saunders, was released last year on Blind Pig Records. That's also when Katzman began to feel the pull.
"My Dear Disco was very collaborative and a pretty unique product, but I guess I started wanting to get back to a more singular direction," Katzman says. "I had a lot of music in me that wasn't being channeled, especially singing my own music. There's something very powerful and therapeutic about doing that."
Katzman's music education, however, began long before he stepped onto the University of Michigan campus. His father is acclaimed jazz trumpet player Lee Katzman, a former member of the Benny Goodman Band, SuperSax and The Baha Marimba Band, among others.
"He played with everybody in the jazz world," Theo Katzman says. "He played with Wes Montgomery, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington's band. Growing up in New York around musicians of that caliber, just hanging with them, was pretty amazing. I mean, we had some amazingly talented friends stop by the house to play the piano."
Katzman started playing the piano himself at age 7, moved to the clarinet in the fourth grade and the guitar a few years later. But, he says, the drums were his first love.
"When I was 4, and my dad was still gigging in New York, he would often take me to rehearsals with him," Katzman says. "One time, as he tells the story, I got up on the drum kit and started actually playing this sort of jazz beat."
Since then Katzman says he's played "a little of everything."
"A couple of years after playing drums, my dad got me a guitar for cheap and I started messing around with writing songs," he says. "I thought, 'Man, I really love this.' And in college I started playing bass and I was like, 'Man, I really love this.' I'm kind of an all over the place guy."
That is now paying off in his current endeavor. Without a permanent backing band, Katzman - whose musical influences range from Feist to Jamie Lidell to Erykah Badu to Neil Young - is approaching songwriting from a multi-instrumentalist's perspective. When he gets an idea, he not only writes for the guitar but also tries to flush out parts for bass, drums, keys and vocals. In fact, Katzman's first solo EP, due out this April, will feature him playing every instrument.
"I really want to track all the instruments myself just because I've never done that and I know I can," Katzman says.
All that individualism, however, does come with a down side - especially when returning to venues for the first time since his My Dear Disco days.
"Last week I played Founders in Grand Rapids," Katzman says, "and I was remembering playing to a pretty packed room just not so long ago. Now, let's just say, it was a little less packed."
For now, he says, that's OK.
"The writing thing really has been like a homecoming for me," Katzman says. "The songs have that groove of neo-soul, some indie rock, some classic folk, but hopefully in the end it just sounds like me."
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Thursday, February 18, 2010 12:00 am. Updated: 9:14 pm.
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