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THE SHARKHUNTERS
The Sharkhunters consists of me, David (KC) Cramer, singing my songs and playing guitar and harmonica, accompanied by Terry Barnett on numerous stringed instruments and Anthony Giancola on drums; along with other friends, like Kristjanna Oleson, who plays viola on The Song in the Heart of the World, the title track of the Sharkhunters' future first CD.
The Sharkhunters musical genre is Space Cowboy Gothic. Some of our songs are more space than cowboy, more gothic than space, but it's the best cage to capture the bird in.
It goes without saying that the sharks The Sharkhunters hunt are prairie sharks, of course. Someday you may find yourself out on your tractor, swathing or raking or combing your fields, or something, and suddenly you will see the ominous sight of a huge angled fin slicing through the waving grass. You know what to do. Stay on the tractor.
DAVID (KC) CRAMER (NOTE: "KC" is short for "Kansas City")
You could say I'm an old/new artist. I think that up until recently I cautiously avoided the limelight except as an all-heart/no-brain harmonica player (but I'm loud), while secretly (i.e., without my knowledge) building up a substantial portfolio of sneakily transformative songs. After a career of accompanying other singers and songwriters, I have recently become obsessed with seeking ways for my own music to be heard, even if I have to play it myself(!).
EXPERIENCE
I began playing harmonica before I can remember, learning from my father, who had spent some years as a child growing up in Tucson, Arizona in the 1920's where there were still a few honest-to-goodness harmonica-playing cowboys. Later when I was in high school, I would fall asleep listening to Wolfman Jack broadcasting R&B late at night from Del Rio, Texas. When I went away to college in St. Paul, Minnesota, a roommate from Chicago showed me how to bend the notes on a harmonica, and shortly after that I became a founding member of a desperately underage jug band playing for free beer in a St. Paul bar, going on to regular weekend gigs with a folk trio at the Scholar, one of Minneapolis' great coffee houses at the time, run by Mike Justin and his girlfriend Kit.
Coming to Winnipeg as a school teacher in 1968, I gradually became involved in Winnipeg's folk music scene, playing with Len Udow and others at the Ting and its later incarnation as Easy Street. Meeting Tom Jackson through musical friends in the early 1970's was the beginning of a partnership that lasted for over 10 years and took us back and forth across Canada, including numerous folk festival and TV appearances, and performing on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Canada Day. (It's OK if you don't recognize any of the names of people I've played with when I mention them, a lot of them are Winnipeg music scene folks who may not be that well-know outside of the Prairies.)
Over the years I jammed with artists as disparate as Jerry Jeff Walker, Tony Bird, Buffy Sainte Marie, Big Dave McLean, Rick Neufeld & Prairie Dog, Laurie McKenzie & The Bandits, Colin James, Hillbilly Burlesque, Burt/Buckboro/Cramer, Manitoba Hal Brolund, Peter Paul Van Camp, All the King's Men (Leonard Shaw) and others.
I even played the Pachelbel Canon and a Hank Williams song on harmonica (though not at the same time) on a movie soundtrack, for a Norma Bailey film documentary about a hooker and her boyfriend called "Nose and Tina".
I've played harmonica for a season of the Ray St. Germain TV show, and in the Manitoba Country Music Awards show band. I've played jazz with Ron Halldorsen, Reg Kelln, and Leonard Shaw; and appeared on harp in numerous recording sessions with local folk, rock, and country artists.
Most recently I was the featured harp player with Burnt, a now defunct high-energy fusion group combining funk, blues, rock, and world beats. Burnt won awards (including a Juno) across Canada for a powerful wall-of-sound approach to urban tribal music.
A few years ago, I experienced an epiphany of sorts, realizing I needed to take my songwriting more seriously and perform my own music, and so I began workshopping my writing through participation in performance poetry events (Speaking Crow at MacNally Robinson and Academy Coffee, and Poetry Slams at Dregs Cafe), and songwriting sessions and performances with the Manitoba Independent Songwriters' Circle.
In 2001, I was invited to be the opening act for a Harmonica Summit at the West End Cultural Centre featuring harmonica virtuosos Howard Levy and Gerald Laroche, for which I decided to create a continuous musical narrative based in cowboy imagery and songs. Performed with friends Rick Burt and Craig Buckboro, I told stories, played guitar, sang, and played harmonica both soloing and while accompanying myself on guitar. At the end of our set, we were enthusiastically brought back for an encore. Many of the people in the audience that night were later heard to say that our opener set was the highlight of the night.
I've been interviewed and featured as a singer/songwriter on local cable channel TV stations, and on CBC-AM and CJUM-FM radio. I appeared on a Christmas compilation performing one of my oldest songs, a Christmas carol titled "Love Was Born on Christmas". And I've been performing my own music in a sporadic development process including appearances in Winnipeg at Academy Coffee, Dregs, the Pyramid Cabaret, and Saxton Theatre.
THE PROJECT
More than one local recording studio expressed interest in supporting my decision to help me record my music. I ultimately decided to work with Dan Donahue at Lion's Den recording studio, although the result so far has been limited to a rough demo of two songs featuring me singing and playing guitar and accompanied by Kristjanna Oleson on viola.
I've embarked on my little mission for the sake of my songs, because they deserve it (they claim). I always feel like I did not really write any of them, I just sort of stumbled onto them as they came into existence in my head.
My musical tastes include a preference for world music and alternative music of all kinds, particularly something with a quirk that sets it apart from the ordinary, and a poignance that engages the human heart.
The Sharkhunters consists of me, David (KC) Cramer, singing my songs and playing guitar and harmonica, accompanied by Terry Barnett on numerous stringed instruments and Anthony Giancola on drums; along with other friends, like Kristjanna Oleson, who plays viola on The Song in the Heart of the World, the title track of the Sharkhunters' future first CD.
The Sharkhunters musical genre is Space Cowboy Gothic. Some of our songs are more space than cowboy, more gothic than space, but it's the best cage to capture the bird in.
It goes without saying that the sharks The Sharkhunters hunt are prairie sharks, of course. Someday you may find yourself out on your tractor, swathing or raking or combing your fields, or something, and suddenly you will see the ominous sight of a huge angled fin slicing through the waving grass. You know what to do. Stay on the tractor.
DAVID (KC) CRAMER (NOTE: "KC" is short for "Kansas City")
You could say I'm an old/new artist. I think that up until recently I cautiously avoided the limelight except as an all-heart/no-brain harmonica player (but I'm loud), while secretly (i.e., without my knowledge) building up a substantial portfolio of sneakily transformative songs. After a career of accompanying other singers and songwriters, I have recently become obsessed with seeking ways for my own music to be heard, even if I have to play it myself(!).
EXPERIENCE
I began playing harmonica before I can remember, learning from my father, who had spent some years as a child growing up in Tucson, Arizona in the 1920's where there were still a few honest-to-goodness harmonica-playing cowboys. Later when I was in high school, I would fall asleep listening to Wolfman Jack broadcasting R&B late at night from Del Rio, Texas. When I went away to college in St. Paul, Minnesota, a roommate from Chicago showed me how to bend the notes on a harmonica, and shortly after that I became a founding member of a desperately underage jug band playing for free beer in a St. Paul bar, going on to regular weekend gigs with a folk trio at the Scholar, one of Minneapolis' great coffee houses at the time, run by Mike Justin and his girlfriend Kit.
Coming to Winnipeg as a school teacher in 1968, I gradually became involved in Winnipeg's folk music scene, playing with Len Udow and others at the Ting and its later incarnation as Easy Street. Meeting Tom Jackson through musical friends in the early 1970's was the beginning of a partnership that lasted for over 10 years and took us back and forth across Canada, including numerous folk festival and TV appearances, and performing on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Canada Day. (It's OK if you don't recognize any of the names of people I've played with when I mention them, a lot of them are Winnipeg music scene folks who may not be that well-know outside of the Prairies.)
Over the years I jammed with artists as disparate as Jerry Jeff Walker, Tony Bird, Buffy Sainte Marie, Big Dave McLean, Rick Neufeld & Prairie Dog, Laurie McKenzie & The Bandits, Colin James, Hillbilly Burlesque, Burt/Buckboro/Cramer, Manitoba Hal Brolund, Peter Paul Van Camp, All the King's Men (Leonard Shaw) and others.
I even played the Pachelbel Canon and a Hank Williams song on harmonica (though not at the same time) on a movie soundtrack, for a Norma Bailey film documentary about a hooker and her boyfriend called "Nose and Tina".
I've played harmonica for a season of the Ray St. Germain TV show, and in the Manitoba Country Music Awards show band. I've played jazz with Ron Halldorsen, Reg Kelln, and Leonard Shaw; and appeared on harp in numerous recording sessions with local folk, rock, and country artists.
Most recently I was the featured harp player with Burnt, a now defunct high-energy fusion group combining funk, blues, rock, and world beats. Burnt won awards (including a Juno) across Canada for a powerful wall-of-sound approach to urban tribal music.
A few years ago, I experienced an epiphany of sorts, realizing I needed to take my songwriting more seriously and perform my own music, and so I began workshopping my writing through participation in performance poetry events (Speaking Crow at MacNally Robinson and Academy Coffee, and Poetry Slams at Dregs Cafe), and songwriting sessions and performances with the Manitoba Independent Songwriters' Circle.
In 2001, I was invited to be the opening act for a Harmonica Summit at the West End Cultural Centre featuring harmonica virtuosos Howard Levy and Gerald Laroche, for which I decided to create a continuous musical narrative based in cowboy imagery and songs. Performed with friends Rick Burt and Craig Buckboro, I told stories, played guitar, sang, and played harmonica both soloing and while accompanying myself on guitar. At the end of our set, we were enthusiastically brought back for an encore. Many of the people in the audience that night were later heard to say that our opener set was the highlight of the night.
I've been interviewed and featured as a singer/songwriter on local cable channel TV stations, and on CBC-AM and CJUM-FM radio. I appeared on a Christmas compilation performing one of my oldest songs, a Christmas carol titled "Love Was Born on Christmas". And I've been performing my own music in a sporadic development process including appearances in Winnipeg at Academy Coffee, Dregs, the Pyramid Cabaret, and Saxton Theatre.
THE PROJECT
More than one local recording studio expressed interest in supporting my decision to help me record my music. I ultimately decided to work with Dan Donahue at Lion's Den recording studio, although the result so far has been limited to a rough demo of two songs featuring me singing and playing guitar and accompanied by Kristjanna Oleson on viola.
I've embarked on my little mission for the sake of my songs, because they deserve it (they claim). I always feel like I did not really write any of them, I just sort of stumbled onto them as they came into existence in my head.
My musical tastes include a preference for world music and alternative music of all kinds, particularly something with a quirk that sets it apart from the ordinary, and a poignance that engages the human heart.
Blog 
| YouTube Video Uploaded | April 6, 2007 |
Live at McNally Robinson from a year ago http://www.youtube.com/v/xCK-e8Mmbxk
Comments (1) | Read more »
| Hello and thanks! | April 2, 2007 |
I think I like this place
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Music
| Title | Genre | Released | Plays |
| The Song in the Heart of the World | Alternative | Mar 31, 2007 | 1011 |
