Passenger Profile:
Dean Krippaehne

Dean Krippaehne

What kind of music scene exists these days in Northwest Washington where you live?
There are lots of clubs for musicians to play in the Seattle area. Everything from small restaurant-type gigs, to the hip club gigs, to a few large festivals. We’ve also got a couple of good music/art/recording schools up here and a bunch of grey, wet weather which is quite conducive to staying indoors and honing your craft. As for music genres, we have our share of everything — you name it — it’s here.

There was a cool underground scene in the late '80s that gave birth to quite a few garage (aka: grunge) bands, a couple of record labels and a fashion industry that peaked in the early '90s. During that era I was playing jazz in downtown Seattle at night and running a demo recording studio during the day and although I wasn’t doing the rock-thing at that time there was a great vibe and a unique buzz around the city for those few years.

It’s different now but there seems to be all kinds of independent entities popping up all over the place. Music, film, Internet, theater, recording, etc… It’s a very creative and entrepreneurial little corner of the world.

What instruments do you play?
I think I would consider myself primarily a keyboard player although I’ve played guitar since I was 10-years-old and do most of the guitar work on my recordings. I really didn’t dig into the piano until I was in college but now, after over twenty years of four-hour-per-night piano gigs, it has become the instrument that I feel the most “at home” playing.

Do you come from a musical family?
My father is not musical but my mother was always playing piano and singing when I was a kid and constantly making up little songs for us to sing while we were driving in the car. Although I didn’t realize it at the time she was teaching me how to write songs. My younger brother (Scott Krippayne) is an accomplished CCM songwriter with 15 number one hits. He also co-wrote the Jordan Sparks/American Idol song “This is My Now” — so I guess you could say that he is a fairly musical member of my family.

When you played in Top 40 bands, did you ever think of making music a career?
I was always trying to make music my career, to write and record original songs, to get a record deal. Even in the Top 40 circuit I would continually be trying to prod the band to play an original tune every five songs or so — ya know, squeeze one in between the hits. I was probably typical of a lot of musicians — big dreams, trying real hard, scraping for gigs, hoping to be “discovered.”

When did you really get serious about music?
In my late teens I just wanted to meet girls and the idea of being a rock star or a pro athlete seemed like the most fun way to go about that particular pursuit. Unfortunately, I wasn’t any good at being a rock star or a quarterback. Luckily, I had just enough talent to get in a band and to my amazement that was also a pretty good way to go about working the girl thing.

Oh, you asked about getting serious... [laughs]

I don’t think I really got serious about music as a business or career until after my first daughter was born. I remember holding this tiny, infant life and thinking to myself “uh oh dude, you need to get yourself responsible.” That is when I began looking at maybe becoming a little less “gypsy” and a little more structured. Soon after cashing that reality check I started seeking and landing more stable gigs and launched my recording studio business.

I didn’t become really serious about writing and recording for film and TV until 2004. That’s when I received my first ASCAP check for a network TV show. It was an eye-opening experience, a true “ah ha” moment. I knew then that it just might be possible to build a career in film and TV music.

You've had a piano gig at a Seattle restaurant for 10 years. Is that a great gig? How did you get it?
I had been playing piano for a couple of years in the bar at Benihana in Seattle. The owners of that franchise were opening up an upper scale restaurant called “Kamone on Lake Union.” They asked me if I wanted a five-night-a-week piano job there and I said, “yes.” I just kind of stuck to that place for 10 years. It was a great hang-out bar with fun people and I was able to play jazz and blues, a little Billy and Elton, sip a cool beverage, and watch the sun set over the water every night. There were many times when I would say to myself “I can’t believe I’m actually getting paid to do this.”

I also enjoyed how eclectic the clientele could be. On any given evening we could have Courtney Love dining on one side of the room and Bill Gates on the other side. Every couple of months or so I would bring in a drummer, bass player and either a guitar or sax and take the energy up a few notches. Yes, it was a great gig.

You've written more than 100 jingles. Who were they for? What can you tell readers about writing jingles?
A long time ago, on a planet far, far away I actually owned (along with a couple of partners) a jingle company called Spektrum Productions. It was based in the Northwest and we did radio and TV commercials for mostly local and regional companies. We did do some work for national and semi-national companies like Toyota, AMC, Dahnken, B&O Tires, and James Jeans but just the regional franchises of those particular companies. If you were from the area you might remember places like Pattison’s Skating Rink, Fairwood Shopping Center, The Bread Board, Mr. Rags etc… those were the kind of things I worked on.

I would usually enter the “jingle writing” process by meeting with a client who owned one to 10 stores. I would sit down with them and try to get a good sense of what they wanted to emphasize lyrically and they would usually give me 500 words. [laughs] I would then need to explain to them that we had to fit those ideas into a 30-60-second radio spot and that we should probably say the name of the company at least two, if not three, times. Next, I would try to get a feel for what style of music they thought would best represent their product. I would then go back and write and record three piano/vocal demos for them to hear. Hopefully, they would pick one of the three on the first try. If they did, we were off to the recording studio.

Sometimes just then name of the company would be so long that there was not much space to say anything else. I remember a company called “Mason Country Federal Credit Union.” By the time you sing that name three times there is little space left in a 60-second commercial for anything else.

I also recall a guy who owned a chain of clothing stores that catered to the hip-hop teenage female demographic. The problem for this particular client was that he loved country music and desperately wanted a country flavor in his jingle. It took a number of meetings to finally convince him that country music — although wonderful — was maybe not the best music to grab the attention of a hip-hop teenage crowd.

You must be proud of your success with the film/TV projects you've been getting. These are famous shows.
I must confess, it is, indeed, a cool feeling to have your music playing on shows that everyone knows. But maybe even cooler than that is when you start to realize that you are finally beginning to “get it.” That you are on the verge of cracking the music and business code for having songs placed in TV and film. And you start thinking that with a lot of hard work and persistence you just might be able to make some decent bucks — if not a full time income — from this stuff. That’s pretty cool.

What made you become a member of TAXI?
I was making a living from music in Seattle, playing gigs, owning my studio, and doing whatever else came along but I still had this big dream. I was still writing my own songs and I desperately wanted to get them heard. But I also had three children that I was raising and moving the whole family from Seattle to LA, NY, or Nashville, just to chase my dream, was more than I was willing to gamble.

I remember reading about TAXI and I was at first, probably like a lot of people, skeptical. There are so many unsavory people in the music biz — so at first I just kind of wrote TAXI off. But then I got one of TAXI’s promo letters in the mail and started digging a little deeper. I tried to find any red flags but my gut kept telling me that this company just might be legit. I thought “this might actually be a real way for a guy living way out in Seattle to get his music heard by the powers-that-be” — so I took the TAXI plunge. Thank God!

How has TAXI helped your career?
Where do I start? TAXI has given me a new career. TAXI’s screeners have critiqued my music and given me incredible advice and real direction. TAXI’s forums have put me in touch with many talented people who have freely shared their knowledge and recording “tricks” with me. TAXI’s Road Rally has opened my eyes and mind to see where I need to go and given me the tools to get there. Through the TAXI listings and forwards I have signed deals with numerous libraries and publishers, gotten major placements in film, TV and Muzak, and received my first gold and platinum records. I can’t overly express how immensely valuable TAXI has been to me. And now I am just a rung or two away from making my full-time living at this new found career. It’s all because of TAXI.

And if that isn’t cool enough, TAXI has given me a community of friends and relationships that will last the rest of my life. They have welcomed me into their family — a family of like-minded goofy musicians. I love it!