Travis Charbeneau started playing guitar in 1962 at
the age of 17 and has worked in music ever since. Early
experience included garage bands of every description and
several road bands working out of Miami, up the Florida
Coast, into Atlanta, New York, Detroit and points in between.
Travis wrote, sang, and played lead guitar in these groups,
and he did a good deal of solo and duo work when the bands
were off.
He began freelancing in
1973 as an engineer and commercial producer at a number of
Miami recording studios, among them Linale Sound, Visual
Productions, Tel-Air Interests and Criteria.
In 1980
Charbeneau contracted severe arthritis which put an end to
his guitar playing. He now has surgical fusions in all
fingers. However, computers, synths and MIDI came to the
rescue in 1986. His home MIDI studio eventually included a PC
running old Sequencer Plus Gold and Digital Orchestrator Pro
software by Voyetra Technologies (he was a beta tester for
these programs), as well as sound generating and digital
processing gear from Roland, Yamaha, E-mu, Casio, ART, the
usual suspects, all sequenced "live" by the
computer and recorded direct to either tape or hard disk.
This work is characterized by short
"songs," in eclectic genres: ballad, space rock, jazz, blues,
classical, Latin. He eventually developed a specialty in
hard rock instrumentals, showcased in the two
"MetalSynth" collections. In 2000 he finished a
compilation CD, "Pieces of Mind," featuring 22 tracks from seven albums produced
between 1986-93. Combined,
these run the gamut , with the rockers featuring his own synth programming and guitar
simulation and sequencing techniques.
In addition to
receiving repeated airplay on Richmond's WCVE-FM (NPR), his
Jeff Beck-ish "Fanfare for the Common Putz"
climaxed "Future Radio," a nationally- syndicated
radio hour of indie music. Additionally, Voyetra Technologies
featured two "MetalSynth" cuts, plus Charbeneau's
writing, production and narration on an audio cassette demo
of their music software.
In 1993,
Charbeneau acquired a lap steel guitar his grandfather had
originally made in 1957 from a piece of Hawaiian "Monkey
Pod" wood, and he taught himself this "fingerless"
instrument. Accordingly, his most recent work integrates
digitally-recorded lap steel over sequenced backing. In the fall of 2003 Charbeneau
began working up some of the lap steel compositions he'd
pulled together over the last several years. "Man of Steel"
is the result, with a
variety of cuts, like "Pieces of Mind," posted as MP3s.
In Richmond, VA, Beginning in
2001, he played lap steel with The Shiners for two years, appearing on both
their CDs "Bonnie Blue" and "See Rock City"; gigging as
far afield as DC's Iota and Manhattan's The Rodeo Bar. He then hooked up
with singer-songwriter Ben Jordan, first as a duo, and then with "Ben Jordan & the
Heathens." He's currently just writing and playing out when he can.
Charbeneau's music journalism
outings include articles for Keyboard Magazine, Music Technology
(US and UK), World Monitor, Option, Copley News Service, and The
Futurist, The Journal of the World Future Society. In July of
1989 he gave a presentation to the Sixth General Assembly of the
Society in Washington, DC: "Towards a New Folk Music; the
Computer Revolution in Music."
Some photos:
Grandaddy Watson's 1957 "Monkey Pod"
lap
1936 Dobro 1 Hawaiian Guitar
