Chris Lanter started playing percussion for the band Sleight of Hand in 2000. He now drums for the band Home Team Time Machine, which plays Home Team Barbecue Saturday at 4 p.m.
Chris Lanter, executive chef and co-owner of Cache Cache, has been recognized many times as one of the finest chefs in the Rockies. For Lanter, it’s all about the little things that take a dish from being delicious to what Afar magazine called Lanter’s propensity to create “culinary wonders.”
For almost as long as he has been cooking, Lanter has moonlighted as a percussionist in several rock bands in the Roaring Fork Valley. He will be playing with the Home Team Time Machine when the band takes the stage at Home Team Barbecue on Saturday at 4 p.m.
Lanter said that percussion is like the secret seasonings in the perfect dish.
“Hand drums are like the freshly chopped garden herbs that you toss in a dish right before it’s served. It’s going to be delicious without them, but their addition puts it over the top to create the full symphony of flavors and freshness,” Lanter said.
Lanter is joined in HTTM by lead singers and guitarists Cameron Williams and Randolph Turner. Steven Vidamour drops the low end on bass, Toby Britt provides the pocket on drums, Rob “Monkey” Desaro tickles the keys and the band is anchored by a three-man horn section that includes Kriss Harmony on saxophone and “the Broccoli Brothers” Ben Yaeger and Mark Yaeger on various horns.
If percussion is the herbs, then what is a band with three keyboards, horns, and percussion? “That’s the Chateau Margaux you drink with the meal,” Lanter said.
The time machine in the band’s name references the fact that whenever HTTM takes the stage at Home Team, it feels like a step back into the Aspen days of yore. The shows are part music concert, part reunion, a chance to connect, to recognize familiar faces, rekindle friendships, to get in touch with a version of Aspen that felt like it was in the rear view mirror until you suddenly realize it’s all around you.
HTTM is a cover band and they are masters of their craft. They lean toward deep cuts: “Fearless” by Pink Floyd, “Trudy” by the Charlie Daniels Band, “Ophelia” by The Band, “To Be Young (is to be hard)” by Ryan Adams. When HTTM rips into the Rolling Stones’ “Loving Cup,” the whole bar raises their glasses in the air singing along to Turner as he sings, “What a beautiful buzz, What a beautiful buzz, What a beautiful buzz.” Beautiful indeed.
“Our shows at Home Team are a reminder of how many old school people are still here,” Lanter said. “There’s just this awesome vibe and energy. It reminds you that we still have this tight-knit community, even despite all the changes that have happened.”
Formative influences
Lanter, who grew up in Atlanta, is a classically trained chef, having studied in France right out of college. He moved to Aspen in 1997 and worked at some of Aspen’s finest restaurants, including the Ritz Carlton, Campo de Fiori and the Caribou Club.
It was in those early days after moving to Aspen that Lanter found himself on a trip to Lake Powell with friends. During a jam on a boat, someone handed him a conga drum as a gift. “I really kind of enjoyed it,” he said. “That was the beginning.”
The drum didn’t last — it was stolen shortly after — but the connection to percussion did. Lanter kept playing, gradually developing a feel for what percussion could bring to a musical conversation.
“Percussion is about being in the right place at the right time,” he explained. “You don’t want to be back there just pounding away.”
Cache Cache
Lanter’s first job as executive chef came when he was hired at Cache Cache in 2000. Four years later, he became a partner with owner Jody Larner.
Lanter described Cache Cache as “heavily French-influenced.”
“We call ourselves French American,” he said. “Americans have enormous portion sizes. But our foundation is French, all of our stocks are very classically French, our sauces are classically French-inspired.”
Around the time he began cooking at Cache Cache, Lanter started playing percussion in the band Sleight of Hand with Peter Thomas, Gary Moore, Paul Boneau and Greg Asala (among others).
Sleight of Hand played all different kinds of rock ’n’ roll — Grateful Dead, Beatles, Lou Reed — but Lanter especially enjoyed playing songs by Widespread Panic, a band he has loved since his undergraduate days at the University of Georgia.
“[Widespread Panic percussion player] Sunny Ortiz is my percussion hero, so playing those Panic songs was always the most fun for me,” Lanter said.
Home Team
In 2016, Lanter teamed up with his best friend and roommate from college, Aaron Siegel, and opened Home Team Barbecue at the Inn at Aspen.
Siegel lived in Aspen and cooked with Lanter at Cache Cache from 2000 to 2002. He opened the original Home Team in Charleston in 2006, and he and Lanter dreamed about opening up a Home Team in Aspen.
“It was always just a pipe dream,” Lanter said.
An opportunity arose at the Inn at Aspen and Siegel and Lanter jumped on it. The restaurant opened in December 2016.
“Our goal from the start was to make Home Team a local, community and family-oriented restaurant,” Lanter said. “It’s always been geared toward the people who live here, the people that make this town tick. We stay open all year to serve the community. That’s always been the core of our business.”
Not long after opening Home Team, Lanter began to play percussion with Williams and Turner, who had anchored the local band Jes Grew for decades.
“They were just really good friends of mine,” Lanter said. “It was kind of inevitable that we started playing together and once we did we gigged every time we could.”
Over the last decade, that outfit slowly coalesced into the band known as HTTM. The end-of-season show at Home Team has become a tradition.
Williams flies out from his home in Tampa for the gig. The band gets together days before the show, not to rehearse but to go on a hut trip together.
“It’s not only a family reunion for the audience, it’s a reunion for the band,” Lanter said. “These are my boys and when it’s showtime, we just kind of show up and start playing.”
In the Grateful Dead song “Shakedown Street,” Jerry Garcia sings, “You tell me this town ain’t got no heart, you just gotta poke around.” If you poke around Aspen on Saturday afternoon, listen out for the nine-piece rock band with keyboards, three horns and percussion.
“Heart and soul,” Lanter said. “That’s what makes the best food, the best music and the best communities.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.aspendailynews.com ’
