As live music was coming back into life last year, guitarist Eric Krasno and drummer Stanton Moore had the idea to start a band together. The two had known one another for years - Krasno is a founding member of the bands Lettuce and Soulive, and Moore is a founding member of the bands Galactic and Garage-a-Trois. Both had spent much of the last 30 years on the road and perfecting the art of the jazz-funk hustle. They ran in the same circles and had crossed paths many times. But they had never worked on any kind of structured project together.
As their idea was germinating, they talked about the sound they were seeking. Speaking backstage at the Blue Note last week, Krasno (who often goes by the nickname Kras) told me, “We started thinking of concepts. One of the things I like about working with Stanton is that as soon as you start talking about something it develops. We both were pretty adamant about making it happen. We’ve all been kind of doing this long enough that we know what the right decisions are quickly.”
Stanton Moore explained, “Kras is in the only musician I can think of who works as fast or faster than I do.”
Talking to Krasno and Moore, one gets the sense that making music is both a mission and a metier for the two of them. They speak both the language of music and project management.
Krasno said, “We’ve both been in bands, been bandleaders… I think that’s key. But I will say that we’ve both been in a lot of different situations and that helped when we were putting our team together.”
With that team in place, they got busy making their first record together, and they worked quickly. As Stanton explained, they followed the age old adage, “The quickest way to finish something is to set a deadline, and we did, and it worked.”
The band, which they named the “Krasno Moore Project” released their first album called Book Of Queens last week on Concord Jazz. The record is a tribute to women in music, comprising covers that reimagine some of the greatest songs ever recorded, including titles made famous by the likes of Amy Winehouse, Aretha Franklin, and Billie Eilish.
As it turns out, the project was very much a byproduct of the time and reflection that COVID brought.
“Covid us time to think about how I wanted my work life to look,” explained Stanton. “Kras and I have been doing this for close to 30 years… We want to work hard but we don’t want to overwork or work ourselves into the ground. Kras has said that whenever we travel [he wants to] have the option to have a glass of wine in [his] hands.”
Kras seconded that, “I want to have the option. That was kind of the baseline. It’s been working out.”
While that may have been Krasno’s baseline, the basslines for the group are provided by Hammond organist Eric Findland, who grew up listening to his two bandmates’ music.
Findland told me, “When I was coming up in music school, when I heard the Stanton Moore Trio, my roommate and I just dug into those albums. We started digging into Soulive, and it’s a full circle thing for me to support those two and find a voice of my own in the trio too.”
COVID not only created the psychic space for the band to form, but also a technical workflow for the music to develop. Krasno is based in California, Moore in New Orleans, and Findland in New York. But the rise of remote collaboration made the music possible.
Said Stanton, “We would do these Zoom rehearsals, and it was very efficient. So much so that we may use that process to start working on the next record.”
In the meantime, the Krasno Moore Project is doing it the old-fashioned way, on stage, on the road, live and in person.
