Graber Gryass Archives - Bluegrass Today

Waking Up – Graber Gryass

It’s hard to clearly characterize the Memphis-based band, Graber Gryass. Elements of bluegrass and Americana are embedded in their sound, but the music boasts such diversity and heterodoxy that it’s difficult to pigeonhole them within any specific genre. The band, which currently consists of Michael Graber (vocals, guitar), Kitty Dearing (vocals and sax), Andy Ratliff (mandolin and vocals), Clint Wagner (fiddle and 12 string guitar), Randal Morton (banjo), Andrew Geraci (bass), and Caleb Ryan Martin (high strung guitar, baritone banjo), have produced three albums to date — Late Bloom in 2020, Spaceman’s Wonderbox in 2021, and their current effort, Waking Up. Nevertheless, pigeonholing their approach remains a challenge at best.

That elusive identity is easy to understand. The members come from wildly different backgrounds, and include an award-winning poet and published author, a Winfield-winning banjo champion, the musical director of Public Enemy (!?), and veterans of the established bluegrass bands, Rumpke Mountain Boys and Devil Train. Those varied influences play a predominant part in their sound, one that incorporates high harmonies, a jam-like mentality befitting the Grateful Dead and New Grass Revival, and, at times, a jazzy sway and sashay.

That freewheeling sound is manifested throughout the new album’s nine tracks. The opening offering, All the Time, comes across with a ragtag feel, both rowdy and rambunctious. Taproot is easy and unhurried despite its busy percussive pace. Waking Up, the implications of its title aside, is decidedly lazy and lethargic. Living on a Fauxline offers an interesting mix of blues and bluegrass, with some pointed picking, a determined vocal, and a shuffling rhythm underscoring it all.

Those in search of a fully fueled vintage delivery will likely find Hardcore Heartbreak and Faultline serving that purpose best, its mix of fiddle, mandolin, and banjo creating a sound of vintage variety. So too, the laidback feel of Okay and Good To You hints at more down-home designs.

Ultimately, Waking Up requires an open mind to fully appreciate Graber Gryass’ wholly unconventional approach. It’s intriguing to say the least, and oddly engaging in an eccentric, eclectic, and anything but subtle sort of way.

Spaceman’s Wonderbox – Graber Gryass

Michael Graber and the Memphis-based collective called Graber Gryass aren’t your typical bluegrass band, given their seemingly off-kilter attitude and a woozy delivery that often sounds like they’re on the receiving end of continuing supply of adult beverages or, perhaps, other substances of an equally intoxicating variety. “There’s a buzz in every bottle,” Graber and company declare on the song that echoes that recurring line in its title. “Try not to feel ashamed.”

They obviously believe in that mantra, as evidenced by the impression shared throughout their sophomore set, the kinetically dubbed Spaceman’s Wonderbox. Call it a cosmic connection if you will, especially since the band’s delirious delivery finds a euphemistic attitude with ample room for interpretation.

Graber himself has described the album’s sound as, “like a radio that’s been left on a volunteer station you hear really late one Saturday night—that’s the concept.” Given the fact that there are 15 players in this thrown-together ensemble, the loose dynamic comes as no surprise, and on songs such as River Bottom Real Slow and Gravity’s String, the melodies meander as much as the song titles would seem to suggest. The plodding pace of Sloppy Seconds and the collective wail of It Was Always You effectively add to that sense of serendipity.

“All you doubters out there, the earth is not flat…we’ve got scientific proof,” Graber declares on the lead-in to the ramshackle Lucky Penny. The wacky ramble that follows, Broke Yolk Folk, the aforementioned There’s a Buzz in Every Bottle, and the straight-out Drinking Again, all form a tipsy trifecta of sorts, a combined ode to intoxication that offers evidence that indeed, there’s reason to believe a relapse may be a prime possibility.

While the entire entourage may be feeling the effects of several sips too many, they still manage to hold things together, with banjos, guitars, mandolin, and even a harmonium wailing at full throttle when a crazy cacophony is called for. Likewise, when the group bids farewell with Strawberry Cake, it’s clear that this Spaceman’s Wonderbox is cruising in for a landing not a moment too soon. It’s been a rowdy, rollicking excursion, but Graber Gryass’ nutty navigation techniques still pulls it all together. Strap up your seatbelt and enjoy the ride.

Video Premiere: Graber Gryass celebrates healing with It Was Always You

The second album from Memphis, TN’s Graber Gryass, Spaceman’s Wonderbox, is set for release later this month with a dozen of Michael Graber’s songs performed in a funky, grassy, trippy sort of style. Interestingly, the record was tracked in 2020 at the same time as their first, Late Bloom, which we reviewed earlier this year. They recorded in an old church that had been converted into a studio, cutting everything live and completing both projects in two days!

Graber is a songwriter and storyteller first, depending on a number of Memphis-area grassers to bring his songs to life. And he has a very special story to share in the most recent single, It Was Always You, which we are delighted to premiere in video form today. Like most of his written output, the story comes from his own life, and the tragic story of his two daughters, their serious illnesses, and a hopeful and very encouraging recovery and healing.

Let’s let him tell the tale.

“My two adult daughter have Cystic Fibrosis. Their whole lives have been spent on IV antibiotics, coughing badly, having many other symptoms, and in and out of the hospital every season. As you can imagine, they felt just terrible all of the time. Paying the medical expenses was a Herculean labor for me on top of caring for them.

Music gave me an outlet to not think about their plight and pain, a healing retreat space of sorts. These worlds remained separate forever. As a progressive disease, my daughters’ health declined. Music always fed my pained heart and soul.

Then, thanks to the CF Foundation and their research efforts, Trikafta ®, a new drug, hit the market. Both daughters, ages 29 and 27, are now expected to live full lives instead of dying around age 40. Their quality of life improved immeasurably, too. May is Cystic Fibrosis Awareness Month.

The biggest surprise was when my daughter Rowan asked if she could sing ‘some old Carter family songs’ with Graber Gryass. I never knew she wanted to sing. She could never sing before without breaking into a painful coughing fit. I cried throughout the gig, sobbing like a baby on stage, then I went home a wrote a song for her to sing. Rowan had this voice inside of her all along, but no way to get it out until now.”

Remarkable!

Michael’s Spaceman’s Wonderbox album is scheduled for release on May 21, at which time it will be available widely online.

Gravity’s String from Graber Gryass

Graber Gryass is a progressive bluegrass/jamgrass band based in Memphis. They include a number of area pickers, most of whom play with other regional groups as well, who get together to perform and record songs written by Michael Graber.

They have a second album due this year, Spaceman’s Wonderbox, featuring a dozen of his compositions, which Michael says “take influence from a wide-open set of senses and left-of-center benchmarks: ’60s pop and psychedelic music, the folk revival, ’70s art rock, early jazz, world music, and introspective singer-songwriters, all performed with acoustic instruments.” Oh my.

Graber has shared the first track from the new project, which won’t hit until May 21, one called Gravity’s String. It’s a trippy little number where the singer encourages his lover to “kiss me and cut gravity’s string.”

Michael explained a bit about the song and who is accompanying him on the track.

“You know that flexing of floating away when you are in love? Where you feel inspired, focused, and able to experience miracles? That is the feeling this song evokes. Randal Morton’s magic banjo kicks off the tune, backed by Clint Wagner’s fiddle, and JD Westmoreland’s mandolin. Harmony vocals by Kitty Dearing and Gia Welch add the magic touch.”

Keep an eye out for more details about Spaceman’s Wonderbox as April rolls on.

Graber Gryass will be playing live this month at the Shelby Forrest SpringFest in Millington on April 17, and at the Railgarten in Memphis on the 25th.

Late Bloom – Graber Gryass

Most albums are merely meant to be enjoyed. Others are shared as a showcase for an artist’s instrumental abilities. However the best offerings of all manage to combine each intent in ways that are easily able to accommodate both, serving as evidence of musical ambition while also allowing for an absolutely entertaining experience at the same time.

Late Bloom, an initial outing by the Memphis-based bluegrass band, Graber Gryass, simultaneously shares both those attributes and makes for an impressive album in the process. Michael Graber, a part-time player with other outfits, has always been serious about making music, having grown up in a city where the music is constantly in the ether. Unfortunately, there were unforeseen circumstances that forced him to delay that quest — first, the need to care for his family when his two children were diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis, and then, more recently, the onslaught of the pandemic.

Happily then, Late Bloom finally finds his desires coming to fruition, courtesy of a set of songs that not only reflect his instrumental acumen — and that of the more than a dozen musicians that accompany him — but also an innate ability to pen songs that share their observations from an Everyman perspective. The music is folksy without being condescending, easily engaging but never superfluous, and with more than a hint of humor and pathos. The latter is evident in a pair of songs that arrive early on in the album, Fool Living Wrong and More To Lose, each a tale about failed relationships that find the narrator accepting responsibility for all that went wrong. Likewise, the ominous When the Water’s This Low comes across as a cautionary tale, a sobering narrative about a near-fatal encounter with a cottonmouth snake on what first appeared to be an otherwise ordinary day of relaxing on the water.

While it may seem — at least initially — that Late Bloom is engulfed with darker designs, that’s hardly the case. Drifting Away and Wind That Shakes the Cotton come across as sprawling and celebratory examples of fully fueled grassicana, riveting and robust. Marijuana, an ode to the once-forbidden herb, recalls something similar to an old hippie’s hootenanny while documenting the weed’s rise in respectability. Likewise, Drinking 40s, is, as its name implies, a tipsy toast to the joys of inebriation.

Then again, what better way to disengage than to simply overindulge? A late bloom is far better than any early doom.