Interview with John Nelson (New Grenada)

In anticipation of our MotorCityRocks.com Spring Showcase Saturday night at the Belmont, we recently chatted with New Grenada brainchild John Nelson to get his take on publishing music, having a career will being in a local band and “beard rock”.

Tell us about the new album?
Energy Shortage was written over the course of a couple months, and recorded with Mike Bridavsky at Russian Recording.. basically a little cabin in Nashville, Indiana. Dave (Melkonian, NG drummer) and I went down there for a weekend last summer and knocked it out. The songs are pretty direct.. guitar, bass, drums and vocals.

We recorded a couple of the songs at home, and had some friends play on it. Christian and Andy from Copper Thieves and Ryan from Friendly Foes. We asked Mike Chav (ex NG guitarist) to master the record. We’re really happy with how it turned out. It’s my favorite NG record so far.

FEATURED TRACK:
“Energy Shortage”

You’re in two bands (New Grenada and Copper Thieves) and a busy school teacher how do you juggle it all?
It seems like I’m constantly busy and I don’t have a lot of free time, so I don’t know if I do juggle it well! I guess if you love to do something, you figure out a way to make the time. NG doesn’t play out as much these days, and it’s kind of nice. I think most of us grew tired of spending our weekends driving around in a minivan, playing hit or miss shows. When you finally realize that touring without the help of a booking agent is kind of a waste of time, and making a living playing music is not likely to happen, it takes all the pressure off.. You can just enjoy it more. Writing songs, recording, playing shows with your friends. It’s more fun now.

You have a fairly new lineup for the band, how has that been working out?
It seems sort of new, but Monday (Busque, bass player) joined the band last fall. Dave’s been the permanent drummer for a long time. We’ve been friends for years and we get along really well. We also grew up on the same bands, and agree on what’s good.

Monday has put his own stamp on many of the old songs. He plays his own bass parts, sings backups, and is fun to watch live. The shows are more solid than they used to be. It’s more about performing the songs well and sounding good, less about breaking shit and making a spectacle of ourselves.

Is it strange to be a three piece now?
It was a little weird at first, because we were used to hearing the songs with all that extra stuff happening. After rehearsing more as a three piece, and rearranging them a bit, most of the songs started sounding right. Usually I write songs on an acoustic guitar, so it makes sense that they still work stripped down.

Do you self publish your albums?
In the past we’ve released stuff on Plumline (label run by former NG members Mike Chav and Nicole Allie), we’ve worked with smaller labels like Asaurus and No Karma/ Contraphonic. We’ve also been on compilations put out by bigger indies like Narnack and Invisible.

My new label, Jack Holmes Recording Company (named after my late grandfather), was started with the money we earned from the Ford Sync spots. So far I’ve put out Energy Shortage and the first Copper Thieves record. I’m going to do all vinyl releases, with digital downloads.

I’ve been using BMI for publishing for a number of years, mostly because it’s easy. Every once in a while I get a check in the mail for radio and internet play and stuff. It’s not much.. that money usually goes towards groceries or new shoes or something.

New Grenada has a very distinct “none garage” sound that was developed during the peak of the “garage rock boom” in Detroit, how did it come about?
My old band Cloud Car played with a lot of those bands in the late 90′s, and we sort of fit in.. we were quite a bit younger than a lot of those dudes, but we were a little more ’60s sounding- I was getting into stuff like the Kinks and Dylan and T Rex a lot, along with newer bands like the Lilys and Brian Jonestown Massacre, and it definitely influenced my writing a bit.

When that band broke up, I felt like I needed a change. The White Stripes were blowing up, other bands started getting national exposure, and the scene was getting stupid. Bands started buying into their own hype. You can see how cool some of these bands were in that documentary that just came out.
I couldn’t relate to alot of what was happening, and I guess our music was sort of a reaction.
The songs became a little more aggressive, especially lyrically. We were experimenting more with sounds and recording a lot at home. There weren’t many like-minded bands playing around town, so we booked alot of shows out of state, tried to play with some touring bands we liked. After a few years of kicking around, the scene started evolving from the garage thing to what it is now: beard rock.

So what do you think of the current Detroit scene?
There are a ton of great bands, more good venues, the support from the local weeklies and blogs is amazing. I feel like most people are open to different kinds of music, and the bills are usually pretty diverse. I think a few years ago, things had gotten pretty stale, and the scene needed some new blood. There are so many good newer bands.. Prussia, the Word Play, Lightning Love, Friendly Foes, AJ and the Cold Wave, Plain Dealers, Deastro, Solitary States… the list goes on. There are still a bunch of bands who’ve been around forever that are still doing good things, too. So, yeah, I think things are healthier than they’ve ever been.