[ Mark Heard related note ]

For the serious rock'n'roll fan, there's something immensely gratifying about stumbling upon a terrific body of work by an artist little known within the mainstream. Time was, before so-called "alternative" music exploded in the early '90s, anyone willing to do a bit of digging could experience that thrill of discovery. Artists such as Daniel Johnston, Robyn Hitchcock, and Alex Chilton (who, of course, was so neglected that Paul Westerberg felt compelled to write a song about him)were all making great music that was embraced by their fellow musicians, but which was shunned by the masses. Happily, with the advent of Nirvana and the Seattle bands, things began to change. Due in large part to the attention foisted upon them by such youthful progenies, talented pop songwriters hitherto ignored saw their names suddenly splayed across the pages of mainstream publications. In the eyes of Teen Spirits, at least, Big Star's popularity had at last reached a level commensurate with its band name.

With this surge of interest in all things alternative, Tonio K. should have become a big star within that genre as well. That he didn't is something of a mystery, although bad luck and poor timing are at least partly to blame. Not only has K. written and recorded some of the smartest, most literate rock 'n' roll of the past two decades (stylistically speaking, K.'s work brings to mind Elvis Costello, Graham Parker, and early Chilton's with a heavy dose of Zappa-like lyrical loopiness), he's also collaborated with some of the music world's finest talents. T Bone Burnett, Paul Westerberg, Marc Ribot, Peter Case, and Charlie Sexton are just a few of the musicians who've appeared on his albums, and Bonnie Raitt, Al Green, Vanessa Williams, and Bernie Taupin are among those who've recorded his songs. With the recent reissue of K.'s catalog on the Vermont-based independent label, Gadfly, fans who might've missed K. the first go round now have a second chance to hear the work of a uniquely imaginative (and versatile) songwriter. As K. himself has pointed out, he's probably the only artist to have collaborated with both Burt Bacharach and the Sex Pistols' Steve Jones.

Born in 1950, Antonio Vladimer Stephen Michael Krikorian grew up in central California, where his father operated a ranch and his mother worked as a librarian. While in his early teens, Steve (as K. was then called) and some classmates decided to form a band, inspired initially by surf guitarist Dick Dale, and later by James Brown and the Beatles. Dubbing themselves the Raik's Progress, the group began booking gigs even before they had learned any songs or, in the case of Krikorian, how to play an instrument. The band quickly gained a reputation for the sort of elaborate on-stage routines that foreshadowed the vaudevillian tactics employed by the Tubes and other theatrically oriented bands. (One crowd favorite centered on a poker game that ended with a card table being overturned and the band members chasing each other through the audience, firing blank pistols.) In the mid-'60s, the group managed to secure a record deal with Liberty Records, and released one single -- "Sewer Rat Love Chant," b/w "Why Did You Rob Us, Tank" -- written in a style redolent of the garage-psychedelia of the day. Despite the Raik's Progress' moderate success, however, in those days Krikorian envisioned a conventional career for himself outside the world of music.

"There was a point in high school when I wanted to be an architect," he says. "I liked making little models of houses, and designing cars -- stuff like that. But then I realized, about the time I hit trigonometry, that I couldn't pull this off any more without doing the homework. Until then, I had always managed to get B's without cracking a book. I wasn't at all into studying, so I thought, 'Well, I won't be an architect after all. I'll continue to show up at school, but that will have to be good enough.' When I went off to college at Cal State I studied English, but dropped out when I was twelve quarter units away from a bachelor's degree. Since then, I've pretty much made my living from music. It's pretty much all I've ever done."

To be sure, Krikorian's effort to sustain himself financially in those early years was eased considerably by a fortuitous event that occurred in 1970. Soon after leaving college, Krikorian and Raik's Progress bandmate Nick van Maarth moved into a psychedelic bus
-- which was parked behind Devonshire Studios in the San Fernando Valley in L.A. -- and began work on an album. As it turned out, the members of Buddy Holly's former band, the Crickets, were recording in the same studio. After hearing Krikorian and van Maarth, the Crickets recruited the pair in an effort to inject some "young blood" into a proposed new band, called L.A.X. As time passed, the invitation evolved into a longstanding relationship.

"They were putting together this project," says K. "and they liked what Nick and I were doing. At that time, the group consisted of Sonny Curtis, J.I. Allison, Joe Osborne, and Glen D. Hardin, who was the piano player in both Elvis's band and in Emmylou Harris' Hot Band. We got to know them, and we made a single that never really did anything. After that, I started hanging out with J.I. and Sonny, and at some point -- in '72, I think -- they invited me to become a Cricket. I made a couple of albums with them [1973's Remnants, and 1974's Long Way From Lubbock], and did a few tours of England, from '72 to '75. It was kind of like graduate school.

"At the time," he continues, "Rick Gretch [Blind Faith, Traffic] was the Crickets' bass player, and Albert Lee was the band's guitarist. During the shows Albert would do these lightning fast, mind-warping guitar solos for the English audiences, who had come to the gig in chartered buses wearing their red shoes and their teddy-boy coats. Everyone would just sort of yawn through the solos, and then applaud politely at the end. But then, when he'd break into a note-for-note version of 'That'll Be The Day' everybody would be on their feet. It was just obvious no one wanted to hear any new material from the band."

Such frustrations aside, Krikorian's tenure with the Crickets proved to be a valuable apprenticeship, not only because it provided recording and touring experience, but also because it marked his switch from playing bass to playing guitar. As it turned out, the guitar K. was given to learn on belonged to the Everly Brothers' Don Everly, who had loaned the instrument to J.I. Allison, who in turned loaned it to Krikorian. "Basically," says K.,"J.I. handed me this beautiful black Gibson J-200, which he had up in his loft, and said, 'Look. Here's G, here's C, here's D, and here's A. Now go play guitar.'" Within days, Krikorian became proficient enough on the instrument to begin putting lyrics -- which he'd been writing for ever since joining his first band -- to his own music. Six months later, armed with a cache of 50 original songs, he signed a contract with ASCAP for an advance of $1500.

K. explains: "The way that happened was, a friend of J. I. and Sonny named Bobby Russell -- who had written 'Little Green Apples,' 'Honey,' and 'The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia' -- called up Herb Gottlieb, who was then West Coast head of ASCAP, and said, 'Hey, you should give this kid an advance. Not only is he a pretty good writer, he's also your neighbor.' And that was true; I lived right next door to Gottlieb in Beverly Hills. So they gave me an advance, and three years later some guy who worked there called me up and asked what I'd been doing. (laughs) I guess they were concerned about their investment. I told him, 'I don't know. I don't think the Crickets thing is really happening, because nobody wants to hear any new stuff from the band. Basically, I've just been writing.' He asked how many songs I'd written, and I told him a couple of hundred. At that point, he asked if I had a publishing deal, to which I replied, 'What's that?' (laughs) Anyway, he gave me the names and phone numbers of five or six people, and Chappell/Intersong happened to be the first company on the list. I approached them in 1976, and they signed me on the spot."

As fate would have it, the representative who signed K., Jon Devirian, had ambitions for Krikorian that extended beyond forging a career as a pay-for-hire songwriter. Rather than solicit outside artists to record Krikorian's songs, Devirian immediately set about securing a record deal for the singer-songwriter. Within a year, K. had landed a contract with Full Moon/Epic (Irving Azoff's label), and had begun recording demos with former Bowie guitarist Earl Slick. It was also during this time that Krikorian morphed into Tonio K., a moniker he appropriated as an amalgam of Kafka's famed protagonist and the Thomas Mann short story, "Tonio Kroger," as well as "Kazak," the hound of space in Kurt Vonnegut's novels.

In the summer of 1978, with an all-star lineup that included Slick, Dick Dale, Albert Lee, and Garth Hudson, K. began work on his first solo album, titled Life in the Foodchain. Upon its release in February 1979, critics fell over themselves heralding the emergence of a major new talent. Glowing reviews appeared in several major publications, including one in Stereo Review that proclaimed Life in the Foodchain "the greatest album ever recorded," and which described K. as "twice as angry as Elvis Costello and about six times funnier." Released at the height of the New Wave movement, the album was quickly slotted by the press into that genre, although the fit was less than perfect.

"I was just doing what I always did," says K., "which, basically, was shooting off my mouth to music. I was just offering my theory, as if anybody cared, but I never classified myself, musically speaking. I was kind of perceived as an American punk, which I wasn't, really. I mean, it was a pretty energetic, rude thing we were doing live, but there was a real element of humor to it as well. Now that I think about it, the on-stage craziness was of the sort that went way back to the Raik's Progress -- that stuff with the blank pistols and so forth. I was always into cowboy stuff. In my bio for Epic, I listed Dylan, the Beatles, the Stones, James Brown, and Dick Dale as influences -- but I also listed Sam Peckinpah.

"One of the funniest routines we did at the time," K. continues, "took place at this concert hall called Perkins' Palace, in Pasadena, where we played regularly. The roadies would bring an anvil case out onstage, and put a pancake griddle on top of it. Then they would bring me a pitcher full of premixed pancake batter, and I would yell out, "How many people are hungry?" And everybody would shout, "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" Then I'd go, "How many of you hunger after the truth, in this Dark Age of lies and media hype?" And everyone would yell, "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" Then I'd go, "How many of you hunger for a meaningful relationship in this time of sexual manipulation and gender reversals?" And everyone would yell, "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" Finally I'd go, "But then again, how many of you just want a pancake." At that point the place would go nuts, and I'd use the spatula to remove the pancakes from the griddle and fling them into the audience. Of course, half the time the audience would throw them back, and that was funny, too."

In addition to being a critical smash, Life in the Foodchain portended well for Tonio K.'s chances of breaking into the mainstream. Backed by heavy promotion from Epic and solid tour support from K., the album achieved respectable sales of nearly 100,000 copies worldwide. As a result of negotiations between Full Moon label head Bob Buziak and Arista executive Clive Davis, however, K. left Epic and signed with Arista prior to releasing his next album. Titled Amerika, the 1980 release met with a critical response comparable to K's debut (Stereo Review once again proffered as glowing assessment, gushing that the album surpassed Life in the Foodchain as the greatest album ever, and that it was as "as uplifting and uncompromising as anything the Clash [had] ever done"), but sales were disappointing. In retrospect, K. feels the move from Epic to Arista interrupted a momentum toward achieving ongoing commercial success. "I should have stayed at Epic and done at least three albums there," he says simply."That's kind of how you build career. You don't bounce around from label to label."

Despite efforts by Arista to promote K. as the new Bob Dylan (a marketing strategy common at the time), the singer's subsequent albums -- the La Bomba EP (1982), Romeo Unchained (1986), and Notes from the Lost Civilization (1988) -- continued to meet with lackluster sales. In the world of critics, however, K.'s music continued to reap praise for its sophisticated wit and philosophical substance. Moreover, K. enjoyed an exalted status among his peers and collaborators, which, in addition to the aforementioned Burnett, Sexton, and Case, included Peter Banks, Booker T, and Jim Keltner, among others. And indeed, in at least a couple of instances during the mid -'80s, mainstream success appeared to be a distinct possibility.

The first instance occurred in 1986, when K. wrote a song titled "I'm Supposed to Have Sex with You," for the Carl Reiner film Summer School. Throughout the summer, two of the country's most influential radio stations, L.A.-based KROQ and New York-based WLIR, kept the song into heavy rotation. However, for a multitude of reasons -- among them the fact that the song wasn't on any of K.'s albums, his record label had no rights to it, and no effort was being made to promote the soundtrack -- no single was available in record stores. And by the time the powers-that-be awakened to the fact that "I'm Supposed to Have Sex with You" had the potential to become a monstrous hit, the movie had disappeared from the theatres, the summer was over, and KROQ and WLIR had removed the song from their playlists.

While that opportunity was missed due to circumstances beyond K.'s control, K's second chance for a hit single was lost on matters of principle. Indeed, had K. been willing to compromise his integrity (and to risk incurring the wrath of the legal system), he might've garnered lasting fame and fortune. The year was 1987, and once again, the L.A. radio station KROQ was front and center on the issue.

K. explains: "I can tell this story now, because the guy involved is dead. What happened was, the original program director for KROQ -- one of the people who made it the station -- called me up one day not long after Romeo Unchained had been released, and asked my manager and me to come have lunch with him. He said he had something important he wanted to talk with us about. So we met him at the studio, and then we all went and had lunch at the Hilton, across the street. He starts off by saying, 'You know, this song off your new album, "Romeo and Jane," is getting big play on the station. I'm getting lots of phone calls about it, and I've gotta tell you, it doesn't have to be just a KROQ song. It could cross over and become a pop hit.' He then told us he was in a position to help, because he was consulting with KIIS-FM, the major pop station in L.A. My manager and I are sitting there thinking, 'Hey, this sounds really good.' But then the guy comes to the end of the conversation, and he says, 'Now, if you can just take care of me, and give me a thousand bucks, I'll go talk to these people.' Well, the guy was a notorious cocaine head -- a kind of seedy character, really -- and we were like, 'Yikes, we've just been asked for payola.' So we kind of didn't do it, and he never said anything else about it, and he also never approached KIIS-FM about the song. As far as getting on pop radio, that's about as close as I ever came."

In actuality, Romeo Unchained, K.'s first release on A&M, consisted mostly of publishing demos recorded by K. and his producer-friend, Rick Neigher. Prior to his signing with A&M in 1986, K. -- along with Burnett, Stephen Soles, Mark Heard, and the alternative band the Lucky Stiffs -- had toyed with the idea of establishing an independent label, and releasing a compilation album in both the secular and the religious markets. "We were going to make our records for ourselves," says K., somewhat amused by the notion today, "and take out ads in the back pages of Rolling Stone and BAM, as well as in some gospel publications, since a lot of us were known to be Christians. The idea was that we would own the product ourselves, and we wouldn't have to answer to anybody." To manage the label, Heard suggested he and the others enlist the services of Tom Willet, a close friend who was then overseeing the A&R department at the well-known Christian label, Word Records. Convinced such a project was destined to fail, however, Willett dissuaded K. and the others from going through with their plans, and suggested instead that they simply release the proposed album on both Word and in the secular marketplace. As things turned out, the compilation never came to fruition, but both Romeo Unchained and its follow-up, Notes from the Lost Civilization, were released concurrently on both A&M and the Word imprint, What? Records. Not surprisingly, this unusual arrangement led some people to conclude that K. was a "contemporary Christian" artist, although the label fits loosely, at best, and is much too narrow to be applied to his music.

"During that particular time," K. explains, "I think Word was looking for something that wasn't really contemporary Christian or gospel, by definition. They wanted something that was cool, but that their marketplace could also relate to, on a theological and philosophical level. Everybody was aware that Bono and The Edge were Christians, and everyone knew that Dylan had recorded those three gospel records -- and Word was hoping to release something along those same lines. They were looking for something that was outside the scope of the typical vanilla, contemporary Christian band.

"Still, it's kind of weird," he continues, "because I never really had anything to do with that marketplace. I had never performed a[gospel] gig, for instance, or anything like that. It's true that those albums were sold in the Christian market, however, and I continue to get fan mail from Christians, as well as from many Jews and a few Buddhists. But never a Moslem, that I know of. Actually, it's mostly atheists and agnostics who write. And I also got a letter once from the Communist Party N.A. -- very nice people.

"The fact is," he continues, "from the beginning I've felt my albums contained fundamentally moral themes, even though I do use naughty words and so forth. As I got into my 20s, I became a little more philosophical about life in general, and more conscious of spiritual matters. I've always believed that the universe isn't just some accident; it's a little too finely tuned for that. And I've always believed Jesus was probably who he said he was. Beyond that, though, I hesitate to say, 'Yes, I'm a Christian,' because people tend to immediately connect you with those imbeciles on television."

In the late '80s, it appeared as though K. might remain with A&M indefinitely, and that he would perhaps release an album every two years or so. Alas, however, that did not turn out to be the case. After completing and promoting Notes from the Lost Civilization, in 1988, K. began work on what was to be his fifth solo album. As in times past, he enlisted a cast of exemplary players and spent the spring of 1989 putting together tracks at Ocean Way studio in L.A. Several weeks into recording, however, Polygram Records struck a deal in which they bought A&M, and the label's new owners immediately set about transferring distribution from RCA (who had handled distribution for A&M since the '60s) to Polygram. On the advice of management, K. took a break from recording to "let the new distribution arrangement settle in, and to allow the kinks to get sorted out."

Later that year, the distribution arrangement seemingly intact, K. and his bandmates re-entered the studio and picked up where they had left off. For the next several months they worked to complete the album, and in the spring of 1990 the project was finished. Meanwhile, however, Polygram had begun a downsizing process that, in essence, translated into dropping all artists whose sales didn't surpass 50,000 units. K.'s new album, titled Olé, was an early casualty. K was devastated.

"I was so frustrated when Olé didn't come out, I didn't know what to do. I was totally beside myself, just completely shattered. We had spent a year and a half making that record. Luckily, around that time Charlie Sexton called and asked me if I wanted to come out to Austin, to help him co-write his next album. I was, like, 'Yes, I'll do anything. Just get me out of here.' So I went out there for a couple of months, and we wrote about half of what turned out to be the first Arc Angels album. And that was a turning point. After that, I decided I would just write, since that's what I had always enjoyed most. I figured, from then on, I would just let someone else record the songs."

And write he did. Beginning 1991, K. set about crafting songs at a remarkably prolific rate. Gradually, his compositions began to draw attention not only from fellow musicians, but also from people in film and television. Songs written by K. in the '90s and recorded by other artists include "You" (Bonnie Raitt), "Too Many Ways to Fall" (Arc Angels), "Love God (and Everyone Else)" (Al Green), "Chase the Rainbow" (Kenny Wayne Shepherd), and "Better Late Than Never" (Tanya Tucker). Movies and TV shows that feature K.'s songs include Batman Forever, Michael, True Romance, Clay Pigeons, Baywatch, and Beverly Hills 90210. In addition to contributing to such projects, K. continues to collaborate with friends such as Sexton and Adam Cohen. In 1993, K. co-wrote his best-known composition, "Love Is," with his friend and regular collaborator, John Keller. Recorded by Vanessa Williams and Brian McKnight, the song became a colossal hit, generating more income for K. than all his solo albums combined. Asked to what degree "Love Is" changed his life, K. offers a tongue-in-cheek assessment.

"Well, it changed my tax bracket," he chuckles. "If I ever meet Vanessa Williams, I'll certainly thank her, because [that recording] made me a shitload of money. I found out why people become so excited about having a hit on the radio -- it's the performance money from ASCAP. And that's why getting on the radio is what everything's about, as far as the labels are concerned. They're don't really care how good an album might be; they're just worried about the hit single. And of course that's not a positive thing."

The same year "Love Is" was scaling the charts, K. made a startling discovery. Upon trying to procure copies of his out-of-print 1988 CD, Notes from the Lost Civilization, he was told by the powers-that-be at A&M that, in accordance with company policy, all copies of the CD had been destroyed. Horrified, K. began making trips from L.A. to New York, where he met with various company executives and attorneys with hopes of obtaining the masters for his catalog, and starting his own label. After investing considerable time and expense, however, K. arrived at the conclusion that his plan wasn't doable. Frustrated, he let the matter drop.

In a moment of serendipity, however, K. had hardly relinquished his campaign when he received a call from Mitch Cantor, operator of a small, Vermont-based label called Gadfly. Unbeknownst to K., Cantor had managed to secure the rights to Life in the Foodchain, and he was readying the CD for re-release. Better still, Cantor was in the process of obtaining licensing agreements for the remainder of K.'s catalog, the entirety of which he planned to issue on CD over a period of months. Needless to say, K. was joyous at the prospect.

"Mitch already had a label established," he explains, "and he was known by all these people as someone who will do things properly and sell some albums. What he does is find records that he likes -- or artists who he's a fan of -- and then investigates the possibility of re-releasing the material. Generally speaking, companies won't sell him this stuff, but often they'll license it to him for a specific number of years. The only label that wouldn't let him use my material was Capitol -- who owns the La Bomba -- so we ended up putting out the demos for those songs [on Rodent Weekend]. Most of the labels involved just licensed the material to him straight across, although he did have to make some kind of special monetary deal to get the rights to Olé."

Although Cantor declines to discuss how profitable the reissue of K's CDs has been, if appearances are any indication, the project has been primarily a labor of love, anyway. K. himself has been closely involved in the reissue effort, penning liner notes and designing covers, and helping to compile tracks for the rarities/retro disc, Rodent Weekend '76-'96 (Approximately). In addition, K. is currently working on an album of new material for Gadfly -- tentatively scheduled for completion this winter -- which will feature collaborations with long-time pals Charlie Sexton, John Keller, and Bob Thiele, Jr., among others. And as if that's not enough, the '60s retro label Sundazed Records recently stumbled upon a tape of a live show by K.'s first band, the Raik's Progress, recorded at L.A.'s Rainbow Ballroom in 1966, and plans to release the performance on CD later this year.

Still, even with all these goings-on, and with interest in his career on the rise, K. harbors no illusions regarding the chances that the youth of America will soon be beating a path to his door any time soon. After three decades in the music business, he'd rather continue doing what he enjoys -- on his own terms and beholden to no one except his own muse -- than spend time in pursuit of some elusive brass ring. And in truth, on those rare occasions when he does allow himself the luxury of pondering the unthinkable, his mind tends to wander outside the bounds of reality: "You know," he says, "I'm fairly certain that the entire population of mainland China has never bought an album of mine. Just think ... that represents billions of potential customers."

Russell Hall ( Goldmine, May 7, 1999 )
Copyright © 1999 Russell Hall

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