Robert Grevey
Gig Seeker Pro

Robert Grevey

Band Americana Singer/Songwriter

Calendar

This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

Press


"Musician returns with debut country album"

Who: Robert Grevey
What: Solo acoustic shows
When: 7pm today and Friday
Where: The Granary at Spring Creek Ranch tonight; Amangani's Lounge on Friday

By Katy Niner

One year ago, Robert Grevey packed up his 3-year-old Jackson life and moved his music to Columbus, Ohio, hoping for a recording reincarnation.
Triumphantly, he returns to Jackson to play songs from his first album - humongous. - at the Granary tonight and Amangani's Lounge on Friday. Both performances start at 7 p.m. His sound a little bit blues and rock, a lot Americana and alt-country.
"Bob's gone a long way," said Rachel Cutler, food and beverage manager at Amangani. Her husband, a drummer, used to jam with Grevey. "We are excited to have him back and see how everything's come together."
Grevey even worked for a stint at the Amangani. "It really is a homecoming," Cutler said.
In college, the Cleveland native spent summers working as a ranch hand at Elk Mountain Ranch. In his cabin on Halleck Creek, he would unwind after a long day with his guitar. After graduation, he rushed back to live here full-time, driving 30-straight hours.
Grevey played the full gamut of Jackson venues - Dornan's, Koshu, 43 North, the Shady Lady, and open mic nights around town - not with any regularity, he said, or before great crowds. He kept writing and his Wyoming musings led him to humongous.
With an acoustic and vocal edge akin to Ryan Adams, Grevey takes listeners into a tight world of 10 tracks brimming with socio-economic polarities, relationship fumbles, harsh climes and, of course, sweeping landscapes. Even the latter seems not to intimidate Grevey: In "Pasture of Disaster," he pairs tambourines with the harmonica to evoke an emotional clash played out in a remote cabin setting.
The album was recorded with a full band - bass, drums, percussion, and the occasional harmonica harmony - but Grevey is touring solo, playing his songs in the acoustic isolation in which he wrote them.
"You learn different things about your songs," he said of returning to their acoustic roots. "Rolling solo, you collaborate with what you can." On this Western tour, some songs have taken on new lives. On his own, he draws out "Daria Reed," a blues-rock rally to get over a broken heart. On humongous., "East Side" is rowdy with electric chords, but live, he's transformed it into an acoustic blues riff.
His next album is all acoustic and inspired during the past six months of living in the Short North neighborhood of Columbus, home to a thriving arts community. Grevey finds the urban scene even more inspiring than the wilds of Wyoming. Having just wrapped up recording two weeks ago, he's tentatively titles his second album Alone in a Room.
Grevey seems to make his own luck. Having signed on with independent Lick Records, he has adopted a "do-it yourself model" for booking shows. His first album got traction on iTunes.
Wherever Grevey may be - alone in a room or driving in a car - new songs hit him like a lightening bolt.
"The hard part is getting it on paper before it goes away," he said. - Jackson Hole News and Guide


"Country-blues musician at Coal Creek"

Country-blues musician at Coal Creek

BY EVE NEWMAN
Bommerang Staff Writer

Robert Grevey first came to Wyoming to work as a ranch hand on Elk Mountain Ranch west of Laramie. Now he's coming back to Laramie, this time as a musician touring Colorado and Wyoming.
Grevey, a solo-acoustic musician, will be performing at Coal Creek Coffee House on Friday at 8 p.m.
A friend offered him a job at the ranch when he graduated from high school in Ohio, and Grevey took him up on the offer for a couple of summers. In addition to bison herds, the 50-square mile ranch located near the Medicine Bow Range is home to herds of elk, mule deer, and pronghorns, as well as stocked fishing lakes.
He said his time herding hundreds of bison out West offered him a bread from city life and the pressures of school.
"I would get in my car and drive off for 30 hours, and by the time I would get there, all that stress was gone," he said.
Grevey lived in an old school house on the banks of Halleck Creek, the site of Fort Halleck back in the mid 1800's. The setting, he said, was an inspirational place for a musician.
"I definitely wrote a ton out there," he said. "The wide open spaces - it gives you time to think."
He later moved to Jackson, where he played music, skied and hiked for about three years. Now he's back east, living in Columbus, Ohio, where he has signed with independent label Lick Records.
His country-blues sound takes inspiration from the Beatles, Johnny Cash, and Townes Van Zandt, and his first album, "humongous.," was released last year. He just finished laying the tracks for his second album, tentatively titled "Alone in a room."
Grevey will be playing at Coal Creek together with a friend on banjo. They'll be performing songs from his debut album. He'll also be performing in Fort Collins, Colorado Springs, Boulder, Manitou Springs, in Colorado, and Jackson, Wyoming.
While living in Ohio is better for his music career than Wyoming, Grevey said it's hard to match Wyoming's scenery.
"It was awesome," he said of his time in Elk Mountain.
For more information on Grevey, visit www.lickrecords.com or www.myspace.com/robertgrevey. - Laramie Boomerang


"Intelligencia in Georgia"

"Bob Grevey’s work continues to mature. New tunes like “Hour of My Death� and “From the Heart� are especially fine additions to the American Songbook. Like the best work of other artists whose legacy is the deep muddy of the delta and Elizabeth Cotton and the Carter Family, Bob’s work comes out of these traditions but echoes them subtly. His influences typically haunt the tunes rather than inhabit them, like smoke in a room just after the smoker has left. As such the songs are never derivative and evince an originality that signals Bob has crafted his own sound. A listener might not hear the plaintive suffering of the blues or the bone-white country soul that emerged when jig-and-reel met the flat third of West African funk—but it’s there, along with a refreshing originality. Unique and pleasingly dissonant chord voicings and extensions and inversions that shouldn’t work but do make even Bob’s sparse guitar accompaniment fresh. Finally, a new vocal style reminiscent of John Prine’s rasp reveals an artist playing his voice like an instrument, as do all the best singer-songwriters.
Bob’s writing is as deft and subtle as his guitar playing. He creates songs around images and nice, tight, little metaphors and hooks. To wit:

the moment often leaves me
feels like we're born to die
sleeping it off somewhere
twisted contagious mind

so I try to walk behind
all the raindrops in my mind
turn to the lord we're told
building bridges to the stars

Bob’s best work does what all great lyrics do, it expresses the universal in the personal. The images are often abstract but they work, reminding one of Neil Young in Harvest and Out on the Weekend. Big shoes for any and every lyricist. The point is simply that Bob’s not afraid to let an image stand for what it is and leave the decipherment to the listener, as if to say: “Here it is, take it however you’d like. I lived it, I wrote it, now I’m done with it. It’s yours.� His lyrics are invitations. He’s not asking us to admire his tortured greatness, just dig on what he’s given us. They create an accessibility that directs our attention to the songs first and the singer second. The songs are what they are because of what they are rather than because of who wrote them."

-Michael J. Davey; PhD; Valdosta State University; Early and Nineteenth Century American Literature. - M.J. Davey - Valdosta State University


Discography

Solo Debut - "humongous." - released February 2007

Single - "Carry You" - receives play on NPR.

Second release - "Alone in the Room" - due out late 2007/early 2008.

Photos

Bio

Born and raised in Cleveland Ohio, arguably the cradle of Rock and Roll, Robert Grevey has been writing and playing music since his early teens. The Beatles struck an early chord, and straightforward songwriting took over from there. Songsmiths like Johnny Cash and Townes Van Zandt heavily impacted his musical maturation. His most recent work was written while he was living in and around the town of Jackson, Wyoming, and is heavily influenced by the dusty mountain towns and people he encountered in the New West.

Rugged and isolated, Wyoming is still cowboy country. Bob first visited the state while working as a hand on Elk Mountain Ranch. The place was immense, about fifty square miles, and was easy to get lost in. Long days led to relaxed evenings in his cabin on Halleck Creek, the sounds of the moving water coming through the cabin window providing a backing track for his acoustic guitar. The cabin was once one of the oldest school houses in Wyoming, close to the Medicine Bow Range, and a near perfect place to write, play and learn.

The change in seasons led Bob to Jackson. Jackson is all at once a bit fancy and a bit backwater, an outpost surrounded by wilderness. The convergence of old west and nouveau riche made for compelling studies in contrast for songwriting. From rowdy cowboy bars to elite hotels, Jackson turned out to be a great place for writing and refining Bob's unique brand of music.

Bob's first full-length album, humongous., recorded with a full backing band, is available on Lick Records (www.lickrecords.com). He is currently touring in support of his debut, playing acoustic renditions of the material, as they were written and arranged, and has recently completed recording for his second full-length, Alone in the Room.

Bob has shared the stage with acts such as Colonel Bruce Hampton, The String Cheese Incident, Moe., Megan Palmer, Jesse Henry, Hope Vitellas, Bill Toms, Jason Quicksall, and a host of other songwriters. He has played the Barrymore Theatre, the Double Door, Little Brothers, and has regular performances at venues throughout the midwest and west.