Mike Brick & the Music-grinders

...from Brooklyn, New York, play rock and roll songs with thinkin' words. Their stuff is rollicking or elegiac, never ponderous, often rootsy, usually fun. They play a broad range of electric and acoustic instruments--guitars and drums but also stuff you don't see on stage every day, like claviatas and banjos and such.

The band has performed together since 2000, at clubs in New York including Lakeside Lounge, the Rodeo Bar and CB's. They play a monthly Saturday night residency in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and they've toured the East Coast, playing shows in Wilmington, NC, Chapel Hill, Richmond, Washington and Baltimore.

Hollywood would say they sound like a cross between the Wallflowers, Uncle Tupelo and Lou Reed, only with the joie de vivre, or perhaps lustiness, of the Clash or Van Morrison on a good day.

A four-song EP, pressed in Autumn 2003, features three originals and a raucous cover of "The Great Atomic Power," the band's perennial encore. Mike Brick's full-length album Straight Up Airport Boulevard is due out in 2005.