Before 2001, Crane was
Tokyo business correspondent for
National Public Radio's Morning Edition, a newscaster for
Bloomberg Radio Tokyo, and an on-air host for
KUAT and
KUAZ in
Tucson, Arizona. He worked professionally as a
soprano saxophonist in Arizona;
Hilton Head, South Carolina; and Japan and as a
union organizer. In 2001, Crane served as operations producer of
WXXI, the AM public radio affiliate serving the
Rochester, New York area. Shortly afterwards, he joined the staff at
WGMC Jazz 90.1 in
Greece, New York, a suburb of Rochester. His first position at WGMC was
development director and then, at 28, he stepped into the role of station manager until 2004. There, while also hosting an afternoon show, Traffic Jam, and running for city council (see Politics and Activism below), he oversaw the fundraising and installation of a new $120,000, 15,000-watt transmission tower, replacing the station's 2,000-watt tower. In Crane's last year there,
JazzWeek bestowed a national award to WGMC as the best station among medium-sized radio markets. While at WGMC, Crane interviewed over 200 jazz musicians including
Claudia Acuna,
Ben Allison,
Karrin Allyson,
Billy Bang,
David Berkman,
Gene Bertoncini,
Bill Bruford,
Jack DeJohnette,
Kahil El'Zabar,
Marty Erlich,
Wycliffe Gordon,
Benny Green,
Fred Hersch,
Bill Holman,
Charlie Hunter,
Norah Jones,
Don Lanphere,
Joe Locke,
Les McCann,
Bobby McFerrin,
Ben Monder,
Jane Monheit,
David "Fathead" Newman,
Houston Person,
Bobby Previte,
David Sanborn,
John Scofield,
Curtis Steigers,
Tierney Sutton,
Cuong Vu,
Bobby Watson,
Fred Wesley,
Matt Wilson, and
Nancy Wilson. Crane says he left Jazz 90.1 to take a break from public life and work as a stay-at-home dad to his newborn son. The publications Blue Collar Review, Poets for Living Waters, qarrtsiluni, State of Emergency: Chicago Poets Address The Gulf Crisis, and Meat For Tea have featured Crane's poetry. In 2011, crane published a poetry
zine called
Daylight Robbery and had his Twitter account recommended in Culture Monster, then the arts-and-culture blog of the
Los Angeles Times. By that time he had relocated to
New York City. In 2012, Crane lost his housing. In response, he executed a crowdfunding campaign and struck out on an interview tour for The Jazz Session during which he also presented local readings of his poetry at tour-stops in the US and Canada. In Auburn, he was an on-air personality for
Auburn University's
WEGL 91.1 and helped found and organize the Third Thursday Poetry Series at the Gnu's Room, a bookstore where he held a management position. In 2013, his second crowdfunding effort for The Jazz Session allowed him to relocate to
State College, Pennsylvania to be closer to family. There he was manager of Webster's Book Store and Cafe where he founded and organized Open Mike Poetry, a weekly poetry-reading series. He later worked as a DJ in State College for indie-rock station
WFEQ The Freq, continuing through that station's switch to the country-music-format Big Froggy
WFGE in 2019 and leaving soon after. In 2019, he launched the podcast A Brief Chat. In State College, he performed with the group Mantz, Chaplin & Crane with Jud Mantz and Lynn Chaplin. Crane stated that in 2020, after having moved back to Tucson, his romantic partnership ended resulting in his decision to begin a nomadic period of van life for which he created an
Instagram series called Vanarchism. == Politics and activism ==