1994: Reno Meets Jay Krasnow
While working on The Hopefuls: Chasing a Rock ‘n’ Roll Dream in the Minnesota Music Scene – a story so sprawling and multi-faceted that each of its four principals could easily have a whole book to themselves – I knew I was going to miss some things. Case in point, in June 2020, I received an e-mail from Jay Krasnow, who revealed that he had served as Spymob’s very first manager, before they were even Spymob. Jay is a multi-instrumentalist and composer who spent 10 years in the Twin Cities scene producing, playing, and co-engineering for a wide variety of artists. He happened across The Hopefuls by chance in a public library in Cleveland, where he now makes his home (I must say it warmed my heart to hear that the book is in libraries in “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Capital of the World”), and realized that he had a missing piece of the story to share. Jay and I chatted on the phone about his memories and impressions of his brief time with Eric Fawcett, John Ostby, Brent Paschke, and Brian...