some say Leland

Some Say Leland has a gem with their latest full-length, Fifty Miles Into the Main. They’ve assembled a collection of simple, lovely melodies housing tales that strike up a sort of melancholy, a sense of longing that pulls the heart strings mighty hard. But there’s no sentimentality here. These are solid, gorgeous songs, American roots music at its best.

Church of the Friendly Ghost is hosting Some Say Leland’s CD release party tonight at the Salvage Vanguard Theater, 2803 Manor Rd. Special guests include Dana Falconberry. Highly recommended show. The CD is a must-have. - KUT - Texas Music Matters - Austin Music Minute - Laurie Gallardo

One of the most extraordinary experiences a music lover can have is an instant connection with music, from the very first listen. Such is the case with one of my all-time local favorites, Some Say Leland, a band that’s actually moved me to tears.

The folk/rock sextet will head to Marfa this month to do some recording for an eagerly-anticipated new album in the works. And fans are excited for good reason. To put it simply, this band makes incredibly beautiful music. As you’ll discover on their 2009 album Fifty Miles Into the Main, their live EP Field Recordings Volume 1: The Abandoned State School and their studio EP Wake (both released in 2010), there’s a rich, deeply complex texture of traditional and modern arrangements by frontman Dan Grissom, who has a way of striking the most delicate and wistful tones in the most intense ways. I’ve said before that their songs are tales that grip the heart in such an unsettling way that you’re left thinking of them long after they’ve ended. - KUT - Texas Music Matters - Austin Music Minute - Laurie Gallardo

What Was, the EP side project of Dan Grissom from some say Leland (ssL) is both a maiden voyage of Grissom’s solo work and an offering of subtle charm and perfectly human imperfections. By the third listen through the 20 minute album, on the second song, yours truly actually cried. In a time and in a society where hate turns the quick buck, What Was captures a grace that is both delicate and luminescent. Is it perfect? No. Completed in two days as a means to obtain gas money while on tour, there’s only so much one can expect. But, do the imperfections matter? Not in the slightest. To the contrary, they add to its magic and make it the best $10 I’ve spent all year.

If ever there was any doubt about the origin of the intimacy, harmonic roots, and floral humor found in ssL, they have been answered by this EP. Tracks like “lazy fluorescence” rely primarily on basic folk instrumentation and Grissom’s contemplative boy-next-door voice. The result is a general theme of almost painfully simple lyrical poetry opened up and revealed under his care. “sometimes I see the dog in me, pawing at the floorboards, nothing beneath / it’s crazy the things that we do when we believe something is true; it’s crazy the things that we say we can’t take away.” Other songs take the same basic tools to create an atmosphere of congenial whimsy, like in “Slow to rise”, a strolling banjo piece not just about a jealous sun, (“[the sun] pulls me from my sheets, burns my elbows and my knees / because he knows where I was last night / I was singing to the moon, an old Steven Foster tune / I was walking with the stars / … I’ll steal kisses from the breeze, talk religion with the trees / by the way most of them say ‘there’s no way to know’”) but capturing an oft unstated irony of “the sun will rise tomorrow.”

Digging deeper into layered harmonies and representing one of the two songs not recorded in the two day session is “The Ocean Was No More”, a mosaic of how even the best of intentions can both create and sometimes end in concessions to solitude. “I was listening to you but you were listening for me / and I wasn’t going to speak so it was plain to see / sometimes I just don’t know what to say, so I wait for the moment to pass away.” The song transitions from his own story to one of a woman sailing on a raft of paper plates—ultimately choosing loneliness over potentially tainting a pristine land. (Sound cool? It is. Make you reevaluate your priorities? Darn skippy). “burned bright”, the final track on the six song disc offers only tatters of a story and a plucking of a classical guitar. The guitar reverberates over and over at the opening until accordion tones lift up the song. Held aloft, percussion gingerly hangs on the edges of the song until the extravagance mounts, exhausts itself, and finally floats out of sight like the ash from a fire.

Three short months ago Dan Grissom played his first solo show barefoot in the grass, under the arms of an oak at Sediers Springs Park. While gathering his instruments near, he did small things to ease and quiet the crowd: joking about his nervousness of his first solo show, asking his friends to sing along, telling bad jokes, and even stopping mid-set to relay a story of a woman in a ghost town who offered to leg wrestle him. That is much of what Grissom does, create an atmosphere of sincerity - be that of warmth and humor or disentangled contemplation.

After all, this is the work of a musician, painter, bearded and bespecked man who asked the seven members of ssL to encircle a Flipnotics audience to create “sensual surround sound.” When and where you’ll be able to see Grissom play solo is anyone’s guess; at the time of this posting he doesn’t have anything scheduled. I suspect you could email Dan to get the CD. But if I were you, I’d make plans to see the some say Leland and get a sense of what What Was sounds like. If we’re lucky Dan will play a solo song or two; I’ll be the one with the Kleenex. - Austinsound.net

Steeped in the lore of Smithsonian Folkways, the hand-numbered sophomore album from local neo-traditionalists Some Say Leland captures a rare combination of devils and dust, offsetting haunting Americana ("No More Cars") with rustic field recordings and Dixieland instrumentals. Leader Dan Grissom is an impressive vocalist and songwriter that, in more engaging tunes "Apples and Pears" and "The Hunchback," recalls Bowl of Fire-era Andrew Bird.

3.5 stars - The Austin Chronicle - Austin Powell

Austin band Some Say Leland began working on their EP Wake after they finished a summer tour last year. They were very pleased with the way their new material was sounding live, so they wanted to capture the mood while it was still fresh and new. Guitarist Stephen Orsak took on the roles of recorder and producer in their rehearsal space – which happens to be the living room of songwriter Dan Grissom.

Grissom observed that the tracks have an almost cinematic feel to them, especially “Slipaway” (the track used on this episode of the Austin Music Minute) and “Overflow,” which features a performance by the West Ridge Middle School Sinfonia Orchestra, thanks to Some Say Leland bassist Lindsey Verrill, who teaches bass lessons at that school.

There’s another EP the band has coming out, Field Recordings Volume 1 - The Abandoned State School, which is quite literally what the title suggests. The band recorded the entire EP in one night, without electricity and only battery-powered field recording equipment, in the laundry room of an abandoned State School for mentally unstable men and boys. The end product is absolutely stunning. “There is a battery powered guitar amp and a Casio keyboard I got at a garage sale for $1,” Grissom says, “but everything else is completely acoustic. There were no effects put on anything after the fact, we were positioned around one mic and used the natural reverb of the room we were in.”

Some Say Leland will feature their new music at their EP release show tonight at Central Presbyterian Church, 200 E. 8th St. Opening the show is Minneapolis band Spirits of the Red City. Everything starts around 8 p.m. Prepare to be blown away. Recommended. - Texas Music Matters - Austin Music Minute - Laurie Gallardo

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Dan Grissom is a mastermind on any number of levels, helping catalyze the local community of alt. folkies – for lack of a better encompassing descriptor – and contributing to a number of projects as well as his own solo work. Some Say Leland may be his best overall outfit, however, cemented when the group last year released their sophomore LP, Fifty Miles Into the Main. The album is deceptively complex in arrangements and themes, yet also accessible in its brooding folk-pop glow. The band already has two new albums recorded that will see release this year. - Austinsound.net - Doug Freeman

This Austin dreamy indie-folk troupe is holding the release for their new EP Wake on clear vinyl at Central Presbyterian Church Friday with Spirits of the Red City. This five-song collection of tunes in the vein of travel-weary folk grown from the richest earth of an Americana built from the sweat of backs breaking in the sun. The sound is swollen with as much soul and feeling as can be injected with subtle field recordings, banjo, cello, accordion and more without seeping out and over saturating.

The slow trickle and snap of what sounds like light rain in the background of “Overflow” is a great addition to this bleak but warm song with clear and quiet vocals ripe with meaning teaming up with slow strings and the hiss of a snare giving way to horns and a host of other sounds utilized in perfect amounts. “Meeting Like This” is impressive in its depth of feeling and beauty surrounding the potential demise of a love that used to fit like a warm winter coat. - Austinist.com

Like wayfaring stranger Peter & the Wolf, Austin's Some Say Leland is known for playing at odd times and in remote locations. The folklorists' new EP, Field Recordings Volume 1, was recorded late last year by candlelight in the long-abandoned laundry room of a state school for mentally unstable men and boys, using only one microphone and battery-powered equipment. "We happen to sound really good in abandoned buildings and dry creek beds," says founding singer/guitarist Dan Grissom, a former host of the Cactus Cafe's open-mic night and member of the McMercy Family Band. Named after a Mississippi John Hurt tune, Some Say Leland chose a relatively more conventional venue to commemorate the disc's release last Friday, the Central Presbyterian Church, but with the lights dimmed and only a handful of people filling out the pews, the occasion still felt like a secret society gathering. Accented by light experimental flourishes and aching background harmony from stand-up bassist Lindsey Verrill, Grissom led the sextet through its entire new studio EP, Wake, unfolding sparse, dime-store narratives of good men in trying circumstances, sounding at times like My Morning Jacket's demos for The Tennessee Fire. - The Austin Chronicle - Austin Powell

Some great new tunes out of Austin, TX from Some Say Leland. The full length album from Dan Grissom and crew features a plethora of instruments (11 band members!) to tell their folk tales of sadness. Doses of Okerrvil River mixed with jazzy, Americana roots music await. The music seems so anachronistic to our time that a single listen sprouts memories of yesteryear. Fifty Miles into the Main was printed with a “limited first edition of 400 that are in handmade packaging featuring silkscreen printing and small handmade lyric booklets. The packaging was printed and assembled by Dan Grissom and Kyley Cantwell, which would make a great addition to any collection if there are any left. Very beautiful music indeed. - WeeklyTapeDeck.com

Some Say Leland’s sophomore album surprises with its subtlety, full of gorgeous tunes and wistful narratives that flow with an easy but unsettled beauty. Despite the release of 2005’s Kings, Bishops, and Pawns, the self-released Fifty Miles Into the Main feels much more like their proper introduction. Since relocating to Austin from Nacogdoches, ssL foundation Dan Grissom has integrated himself into the new local lo-fi roots scene that has sprung up around the Secret Shows, not only with Some Say Leland, but also solo and with the McMercy Family Band. What separates Some Say Leland from those other groups, however, is the quality of the album and intricacy of Grissom’s songwriting, which forgoes the ribald and wild enthusiasm of his contemporaries for more contemplative and controlled ballads. Likewise, Grissom’s solo album from last year, What Was, was promising, but also rushed and somewhat haphazard, so Fifty Miles feels like a true representation of his talent given the tools and time to have it properly developed.

The album is broken by short instrumental and ambient interludes, which flow within the sequencing and help emphasize the actual songs, but also at times become somewhat distracting. The onomatopoeic “Bgrrsh” crashes the album’s opening, before sliding into the banjo tracked excellence of “The Ocean Was No More.” Grissom often sounds like Andrew Bird in his gentle delivery and quickly-paced phrasing, as well as his somewhat cryptic narrative style. “I was looking at you while you were looking at me, wondering why I see the things I see,” he opens on the song, before letting it slide from the personal into an odd and intriguing allegory of a woman sailing across the ocean on a raft of paper plates.

That opening line also sets up the theme that seems to run throughout Fifty Miles, the grasping at the unseen and forsaken, and the illusions between perception and reality. In this way, the instrumental interjections provide a hypnotic lull that seems to dip below a conscious surface to reveal glimpses of the other side, especially the eerie ambience of “Spool” and “The Promise of Dust.” At times it’s a dark vision, as with eerie dissonance behind the ominously calm drawl of “Devil’s Juicebox,” accented by the mourning, muted horn. “What do you see when you close your eyes?” Grissom ponders in the song, with the dream of the devil tempting murder juxtaposed against the waking dusty sunlight. Still, the song ends “And I held my head. And I closed my eyes,” suggesting that there is no resolution between the dream and reality.

“The Hunchback” likewise gestures towards the miracles of the unseen. Dreams continually operate as either escape and torment, but always as half-acknowledged realizations, even in their absence. The beautiful and tender “Porcelain (Potacha)” opens “I awoke from a dreamless night with a train in my head. I thought I was dead. I thought you were gone.” The songs hover in that balance of waking and slumber, the brief fleeting moments of uncertainty drawn out and explored. Reality still breaks in, as on the defiant New Orleans dirge of “The City is Flooding,” and even in the urge to escape and recreate, epitomized with the fantastic dislocation of “No More Cars.”

The album closes, appropriately enough, with “Found Myself Lost,” a nine-and-a-half minute ode to resignation, or at least acceptance. By the end’s solemn declaration of “I don’t need your help, I don’t need you around for me to call upon. I am alone. I like to be alone. So leave me alone,” followed by three minutes of a fading melodic drone, the conclusion is feigned at best. We’re still locked inside the contemplative ambiguity of Grissom’s world, but now left there alone. Yet it may still be the necessary move forward, as unsatisfying as it is, especially when put in context of songs like the album’s centerpiece, “Thread,” which under a pounding rhythm and disjointed movements, breaks down with the single line “I found your memory under my bed in a box full of pictures and thread.” Fifty Miles is an often heavy and unsettling journey, attempting to both excavate and bury, but it’s a testament to Grissom’s songwriting that he crafts the album with such subtlety and mesmerizing narrative to draw the listener through and want to head into the breach again. - Austinsound.net - Doug Freeman

This Austin dreamy indie-folk troupe is holding the release for their new EP Wake on clear vinyl at Central Presbyterian Church Friday with Spirits of the Red City. This five-song collection of tunes in the vein of travel-weary folk grown from the richest earth of an Americana built from the sweat of backs breaking in the sun. The sound is swollen with as much soul and feeling as can be injected with subtle field recordings, banjo, cello, accordion and more without seeping out and over saturating.

The slow trickle and snap of what sounds like light rain in the background of “Overflow” is a great addition to this bleak but warm song with clear and quiet vocals ripe with meaning teaming up with slow strings and the hiss of a snare giving way to horns and a host of other sounds utilized in perfect amounts. “Meeting Like This” is impressive in its depth of feeling and beauty surrounding the potential demise of a love that used to fit like a warm winter coat. - austinist.com

Reminiscent of dusty field recordings and the kind of primordial folk heard on The Anthology Of American Folk Music, Some Say Leland is earnestly committed to its version of American roots music, singing lyrical tales of wandering troubadours and weepy odes to hunchbacks over a dry creek bed of banjos, accordion, and brass. While it's tempting to relate them to early 20th-century revivalists like Squirrel Nut Zippers, Some Say Leland's antediluvian bent is far from a gimmick: Its palpable affection for the cleansing power of folk should delight fans of fellow modern-day traditionalists like Will Oldham or Andrew Bird. - The Onion

...their wry, almost reserved approach to storytelling lends a captivatingly personal touch to their music.

Lyrically, they meander accross the bittersweet end of the emotional spectrum, from the frustration of unrequited love on "For You" to the dull ache of a relationship going south on "Sara Says" to pangs of regret on "Far Away" and "Get Where You're Going." Musically, they're talented enough to pull off some daunting songs without drawing attention to themselves.

Bottom line: This talented bunch is quickly becoming a local staple, and "kings, bishops, and pawns" manages to encapsulate all the reasons why. - The Buzz - Kendal Rogers

"Life's just a game, I'm just a pawn," some say Leland singer/songwriter Dan Grissom poignantly states in "Shape." The group's debut record, "Kings, Bishops, and Pawns" is one of the finest folk/Americana-type recordings in recent memory...
...The influence of Cohen and Bob Dylan, two of Grissom's chief influences, can be heard clearly on tracks like "For You" and "The King and the Bishop," but Grissom is a wordsmith with his own approach to life and love. The opening track, "The King and the Bishop" has Grissom pouring out blissed-out language, circa "Highway 61" Dylan... - The Pine Log - Chris Edwards

Grissom seems to come from the Elliott Smith or Iron and Wine school of singer/songwriters. A soulful acoustic balladeer with nakedly honest lyrics and melodies that slowly work their way under your skin, he's one of Austin's most direct and compelling solo artist, and this EP is a concentrated blast of pure beauty. - manaboutaustin music blog

Some Say Leland is one of the most appealing and satisfying live acoustic ensemble performances happening in Austin. In terms of song craft and musicianship, Some Say Leland offer truly top-notch artistry...what we have is simply a beautiful example of original contemporary American music. Many talented artists try sincerely, but fall honorably short of that mark. - Church of the Friendly Ghost

Some Say Leland has a gem with their latest full-length, Fifty Miles Into the Main. They’ve assembled a collection of simple, lovely melodies housing tales that strike up a sort of melancholy, a sense of longing that pulls the heart strings mighty hard. But there’s no sentimentality here. These are solid, gorgeous songs, American roots music at its best. - KUT - Austin Music Minue - Laurie Gallardo