History
Grüvis Malt was started in March, 1995 in Providence, Rhode Island by high school students Gavin Castleton (keyboards), Brendan Bell (vocals/percussion), Ethan Ruzzano (guitar), and Steve Martinka (bass guitar). The band had its beginnings in experimenting with random time signatures and heavy noise. At the end of the summer, Castleton moved to Portland, Oregon.
Upon Gavin's return in 1996, Josh Hutchins (a.k.a. Johnny Longburns) joined the band as a turntablist, and Breakfast All Day, their first EP, was recorded at Diva Studios with David Stem. In 1997, Martinka and Hutchins both left the band. Brandon Clemmens replaced Martinka on the bass guitar, and the five piece began writing the songs that would become the Fetus EP.
In early 1998, Brandon Clemmens was replaced by Saunder Jurriaans on bass guitar. Erik Nilsson left school to become a full-time saxophonist with band, and Ethan doubled on trombone. With a full fledged horn section, the band wrote songs for the album Sound Soldiers, while reworking the songs on Breakfast All Day and the Fetus EP. The result was Cromagnetic, considered by the band as more of a compilation than a full-fledged album. In 1999, Grüvis Malt released Sound Soldiers, an album many consider to be their musical "starting point". After rigorous regional touring throughout 1998 and 1999, Grüvis Malt went on a month-long tour around the US in 2000.
After the US tour, Ruzzano and Jurriaans resigned from the band and were replaced by Steve Geuting and Justin Abene respectively. Reed Wallsmith joined the band in 2001 on alto saxophone. The band began work on ...With the Spirit of a Traffic Jam..., their next full length album (produced and recorded at Diva Studios on their own). DJ Chris Kilmore of the band Incubus, with whom they had played shows, DJ'd on 2 album tracks and one B-side, "Graduated". In spring of 2001 Reed left the band to return to his hometown of Portland, OR. In fall of 2001 the band signed with Lakeshore Records, a subsidiary of Lakeshore Entertainment. Throughout 2002 and 2003, Grüvis Malt toured to promote the album, which was released on March 28, 2003. (The album hit stores April 9). Relations with the label were strained when Lakeshore refused to give the band copies of the record to sell at their record release party and shows throughout their US tour. The band parted ways with the label later that year, citing their having never received royalties as a violation of contract. To date they have still never been paid royalties for ...With the Spirit of a Traffic Jam....
In 2003, Grüvis Malt recorded Simon at Sound Station Seven (the last album recorded there before it closed) with engineer Rob Pemberton. In 2004, Gavin and Brenden began working on separate side projects. Directly after the release of Simon, Grüvis Malt stopped touring and began recording Maximum Unicorn in Justin Abene's Fall River studio. Maximum Unicorn was released in November 2005 on Integers Only, without even a record release show.
In 2006, Justin Abene, Gavin Castleton, and Brendan Bell formed Ebu Gogo and toured the US from 2006 to 2009 in support of their two self-released full-lengths: Chase Scenes 1-14 and Worlds.
The members of Grüvis Malt always valued the integrity of the music more than the publicity they received for it; thus, they preferred to remain unsigned and advertised predominantly using a "grassroots" marketing scheme.
Read more about this topic: Gruvis Malt
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)