by Sebastian Mackay
Commercial. When it comes to music it’s often a dirty word. Commercial songs are the ones that the Biebs and Gaga write. They’re easily digestible flashes in the proverbial pan and they’re usually written by someone else or laid on top of a dreadful beat. But the reality for many bands, as much as they love what they do, is that they have to make money. The need to fit into one market or another because like writers the world over they can’t all afford to do it for free. Money is a motivator, sometimes it’s a pressure builder and other times it’s too enticing to break away from the mold (we all know those bands that produce the same album over and over).
Grizfolk is not one of those bands. Actually, they don’t fit into anything that’s written above. For them it’s not a case of the pressure of having to be commercial. It’s a case of not letting people down, knowing when you’re supported and feeling like you’re, monetarily speaking, worth that support. Do they write instantly commercial pop songs (are rhetorical questions annoying in articles? Yeah, yeah they are)? No, but they have an ethos.
“We don’t see it as ‘pressure’, more like there’s a team of people that believe in us as artists and we don’t want to let them or ourselves down. [We] believe if a song is great then it rises to the top.”
With that out of the way, there’s something else that needs a good hard look. And that’s what they’ve come up with as an EP. The band’s lead singer, Adam Roth, and drummer Bill Delia call it an “appropriate introduction to Grizfolk” and say that they’ve felt a “very warm welcoming embrace from listeners.” The reception of the EP, which is titled From The Spark, is the predecessor to a new album.
The band is chipping away at the album slowly, but say that writing it has been a struggle (if you’ve checked out the EP – you’ll get that pun which was fully intended). Grizfolk only has a few weeks off the road and they’re looking forward to having a few more to wrap up the process but nonetheless, they’re “really excited to share the new material.”
The album, as well as the band itself, was born out of boredom and fatigue. They were in search of something more, something different, and in the forming of Grizfolk, they found what they were looking for. The band call it a “turning point” for themselves and as a group, but it’s been something more than that. In their words it’s been, a discovery that “starting over is beautiful and trying new things is the essence of life.”
Important revelations given that they themselves say “[we] believe the moment you stop creating is when the train derails.” Grizfolk has been what’s stopped the train derailing and in that, with release of the EP and a relentless tour, they have continued to build momentum and “momentum is everything.”
That momentum has been channeled into the EP and the new material. Their mission has been to “make sure that the songs were crafted exactly the way we wanted them to sound, even before we began to play them love.” Now that first batch of songs has been released into the world and the band are on tour, they’re hoping that who ever hasn’t heard the EP will be infatuated by the live show.
“I think the energy and passion of our show is a force of its own.”
It’s working because people are slowly getting drawn into the band and their music. Which is a good thing for the band, not only commercially, but as people that love a good live show.
“One of our favorite things about playing live is winning over new audiences who have maybe never heard us before. Each night, there’s a little bit of mystery as to who we are and the majority or the audience has no clue what to expect.”
The final result: “by the end of our first song, we have most people clapping along and dancing and by the time we get to our last song, we have the entire building right there with us rocking out.”
Triumph.
