Neal Grandstaff Band with Joel Baker live at Kitty’s Saturday

Through his connections to the Portland music scene, Baker found Grandstaff and they put together a trio with Baker on the drums and vocals, Grandstaff on guitar and vocals and another popular Portland musician, Brian Rose on keyboard and vocals.

Grandstaff sat down with the Headlight Herald to discuss his life in the music business and what to expect at one of his shows.

Grandstaff has been involved in music starting at a young age, his mother was a talented singer, and his father played guitar and piano, so music is in his blood.  

Grandstaff’s first music training began at age 10 with Segovian Master Class student and guitar instructor, Zane Casey, in Washington State.

In 1966, between the ages of 13 and 14 Neal started teaching beginning students at Wiltsey Weather’s Music in Salem. The education tutor was Precilla Wiltsey, a piano instructor of local repute with a small academy. Neal used Mrs. Wiltsey’s Academy approach and fused that with the Segovian method and was teaching 10 students a week.

Work experience continued and in the next 3 years Neal had taken on 12 to 16 students per week in Salem and Corvallis, all the while creating and musically directing a performing quartet.

At the ages of 17-18 Grandstaff traveled extensively on the West Coast and worked Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, and Nevada (Reno, Tahoe, and Las Vegas) in shows and pit bands for a little over a year.

In the early 70s (1971-1973) at age 19, Neal attended Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon and was subsequently contracted to teach the Adult Education guitar classes at that school. During this same time frame Neal was teaching private lessons at Music West, also in Eugene, and was carrying 32 private students a week.

At 22, he returned to the “traveling circuit” and started a publishing company, Sunrise Publications, which produced guitar instruction pamphlets and small manuals. Neal continued to travel, teach, and record between Seattle, Portland, San Fransisco, L.A., Reno, Tahoe, and Las Vegas, Nevada.

In 1977 Grandstaff moved back to Portland and he created a Co-Op music production team at Sound Smith Studios and a production company, Staff-O-Life Productions, using MHCC’s “Kicks Band” members and local professionals: Joe Millward, Rob Thomas, Thara Memory, Lloyd Jones, Tom Grant, Jim Solberg, Gary Clinton, Terry Lane, Dick Burdell, Mike Murphy, Jeff Uusitalo, Glenn Holstrum, Lester McFarland, Lee Wuthenow, just to name a few of the primary players.

Grandstaff’s band has played Kitty’s the last two weekends, and had the crowds dancing from start to stop.

They play just about anything from old rock, country to anything contemporary. Grandstaff jokes, “We play anything that pays,” he said in a phone interview. “We do rock from he 50s, 60s, 70s, to current, country, I call it the Great American Songbook.”

Grandstaff says he’s crossed paths with Baker years ago and the two were reintroduced by Rourke, a guitar player who sits in with the Joel Baker Band quite often, and who also plays lead guitar with the Lugnuts, a longtime Portland band. “Joel is a great drummer,” Grandstaff added.  “I’m so jazzed to be doing this in Tillamook, it’s a great venue and the people are so appreciative of live music. It’s always a fun to get out and play in Tillamook.”