AVAILABLE NOW, uh, again!

As many of you have surely noticed Grover Kent's catalog has been off of der Interwebz now for some time ever since our digital label Are you Listening Records went cans-up.  Also, since we move like a sloth on ludes, we only just got around to making it available again!

Presenting the official GROVER KENT BANDCAMP PAGE!

Right now you can only get our 2006 (holy crap it's six years old already!) EP Running Out of Ramones but it's got BONUS TRACKS! I know what you're thinking "Rich, what about those of us who buy CDs? Where's our Bonus tracks?" Well, if you bought the Grover Kent odds and sods collection (Everything Must Go!), they are originally from there, so you're already covered.

So there you have it.  If you don't already own the thing, and you're some weirdo who simply can't stomach the idea of CDs anymore, here's your chance to buy it.

More news to come.

RIP Court Tavern

This one hurts, more than a little.  The Court was a great venue to see bands and a great place to play. 

Sad to see it go...

yes, that's us playing there.

Happy New Year!

I don't know what the year 2012 holds for Grover Kent, but I hope it contains shows and some recordings. Hope your holidays were awesome, and let's all try and make 2012 the best one yet!

I can tell you that there will be a deluxe version of our Out of Print debut album available before the summer. The digital version of Running Out of Ramones will be out quite soon. technically speaking, since the damn thing was CD only, the digital version was always available because it was a damned Compact Disc to begin with!

nice, 12 hours into the new year and I'm already complaining!

It's my Burfday!

So here's my gift to you!

a free download of Old Man Conroy!

http://www.mediafire.com/?63td0a0unb5tmhy

Still plugging, also we almost have artwork!

yeah, just got the cover prelims for our new single "I Love You, Christina Hendricks."  It's looking good!  Some minor tweaking, and then it's all up to me to finish the damn vocals.

Studio Update!

So I went over to Jay’s last night to record vocals, assisted by my aforementioned partner in musical crime and the lovely and talented Sarah Blake who is recording the current single for us.

It’s been somewhere in the neighborhood of six years since I have been recording and man, did it show last night.  Here’s what we learned:

1)      My first take is usually pretty much a resounding turd.

2)      The turd becomes the scratch vocal track

3)      I sing along to the scratch track, putting it a proper vocal performance

4)      I sing along to the proper performance, thus doubling my vocals appropriately

5)      Once properly “lubed up*” I am pretty consistent.

I am seriously rusty with this stuff.  Wow.  There was a time (probably 5 years ago or so) where 4 songs would have taken, at the most, two hours.  I mean, I’m not the dude from The Darkness or anything, so this really shouldn’t have taken as long as it did, but again, I’m not where I used to be.  You do have to walk before you can run, so by the time we record the album (where money is spent) things should be great!

Also, I had Chinese food last night (bad idea!)and, at one point, let out a fart that was so long and sonorous, we probably should have recorded it to use as a loop or something.  Sarah went from shocked to hysterically laughing to, I think, a little impressed.

I went from embarrassed to “well, ain’t no stoppin’ it now.” She puts up with a lot.

So, what did we actually get done?

Vocals for “Luxury Sedan” and “I Don’t Care About You” are ostensibly done, pending my nitpicky approval.  Vocals for “I Love You, Christina Hendricks” are mostly done, but I have some timing issues I am working through.  Nothing done on “Conspiracy Theory” at all yet…

* Nooooooooooot what you think.

Lyrically speaking (or speaking of lyrics...)

Man I’m such a pain in the ass about lyrics. 

“There’s a fine line between Stupid and Clever.”

I believe that, even if it is from a fictional documentary about a then-fictional rock band.  Hence not finishing the lyrics to “I Love You Christina Hendricks” until just before recording them.

My bandmates must want to KILL me sometimes with my metaphorical feet-dragging sometimes.  I just want to make sure I’m not being hackneyed and clichéd, unless I am doing it on purpose.  Sometimes, you want to make the easy rhyme because it’s what the song calls for.  You’re using it to make a point, you know?  Other times, you’re trying to say something important and personal and you will not let it go until you either lock it up ot throw it away and start again.

Here’s a prime example. I met my wife in 1997.  The GK tune “The Story of You and Me” began to take shape, oh somewhere around 2003.  After I had written “Caroline” about the birth of my niece, my wife would continually harass me about why I didn’t write a song for her.  She was light hearted about it but it was taking a while.  That song went through about a dozen revisions before I brought it to Jay in the summer of 2005 and we hammered it out.  Nobody heard any of those old versions, and I kept not even one phrase from them, other then the title which came from the last draft.  I think she heard it for her birthday in 05.  It finally was released in 2006.

Conversely, I wrote “Jimmy’s Little Blue Hatchback” on the way to the Tick Tock Diner after a Comrades show.  I was watching Jimmy (their singer) Tetris all his gear into this impossible looking space in his car and remarked how amazed I was by it when bass player Greg said “You should write a song about it!” to which then-new guitarist Darren said something along the lines of “He can’t write a song about that!”

Greg looked at him like “yeah, that’s what you think!” and I proceeded to write it on the way to the diner, singing it for Darren as he got out of his car in the parking lot when we got there.  That was back when I could write my own music more reliably and not have ALL the songs come out like "Blitzkrieg Bop."  It’s not “Bohemian Rhapsody” or anything, but it’s a good song and didn’t require any further tooling.

I think the last two songs that have sprung full into my mind like that were “I Think She Used to Be a Man” and “Rebound Guy.”