Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Mon May 05, 2008 12:15 pm
There are two groups that have gone by the name of "The Grief Brothers." One is a bunch of old geezers from Wales who play "[their] own brand of country and rock." The other, the real, Grief Brothers were lightning rod interpreters of the American songbook and our best alco-folk duo. This is about the real Grief Brothers, whose demise in 2007 left a smoldering crater in the roots music scene.
Bobby and Nicodemus Grief moved from their home in Duluth after a bad drought and several scrapes with the law had made their household unable to support the growing family. Bobby in particulary was unsuited for Duluth's hardscrabble rural lifestyle due to a fragile constitution he'd been left with after a miraculous resuscitation from still-birth that earned him his nickname "Stillborn Bobby Grief." Bobby and Nicodemus, the oldest boys, decided to strike out on their own and try their hand at earning a living with the songs they'd learned at their parent's knee. Hearing that jobs and music were plentiful in Arizona, they sold off everything but their guitars and caught a Greyhound bus for Phoenix. Working odd jobs and playing in their apartment at night, they were discovered by Dave Stevens, a field recordist who worked as a cop and had been called to respond to one of many noise complaints against the Grief brothers. When he found them, they were drunk, playing the most unique, toe-tapping, and wrenching version of "Long Black Veil" he'd ever heard. He got his recording machine out of his police cruiser, and the rest is history.
Over the course of a few years, the Grief Brothers recorded a massive catalogue of songs ranging from folk gospels like "Peace in the Valley" to original drinking laments like "Faceplant City." Their early sessions were collected as "Introducing the Grief Brothers in True Stereo." The "True Stereo" title came from Steven's use of a single live stereo setup to record the GBs -- no overdubs or other studio trickery, just the brothers live and inebriated from their tiny living room in real stereo sound. Many of the songs were prefaced by live converstional introductions that ranged from the acrimonious ("Runaway") to the humorous (as on their now-classic reclaimation of "Love Hurts"). Stevens hired Phil Jacobs to put the "True Stereo" album up on the Internet at http://GriefBrothersUSA.com as a teaser for the planned full LP "Going Places," which featured some old favorites such as "Weary Hobo" and more stunning, raw originals. Fuelled by whisky and a desire to capture songs nearly lost in the tide of slick contemporary country radio and plodding arena-emo, the Griefs blazed a rocking trail with two pounding acoustic guitars and quirky unison singing. Appearances on Ten Thousand Percent Radio brought them to a wider audience in the Internet community.
The Grief Brothers had one of the most distinctive styles in music, and one that set them apart from other acts in the various genres they were lumped into, from "Alt-country" to "Folk-edge." Bobby's deep, soulful voice and chiming guitar meshed with Nicodemus' percussive chording, unusual spooky solos, and backing vocals to create a powerful unified sound that only sibling acts can produce. With clear ancestry in the Louvin Brothers, Everly Brothers,and the Carter Family, the Grief Brothers modernized guitar folk and galvanized it with an uptempo power.
Just as the Grief Brothers were gaining recognition and momentum as America's best alco-folk act, a cascade of tragedy struck the Grief camp.
In late February 2006, Phil Jacobs was arrested on charges stemming from a questionable real estate deal in 2003. This put the Grief Brothers website in a stasis. Then, Nicodemus suffered a bad fracture of his left pinky during a basketball game, leaving him in a cast and unable to churn out his distinctive block chords for three months, which halted work on "Going Places." Just as they had begun to resume work, Stevens married his childhood sweetheart Betsy Mae Gibbon, and on her insistence moved back to Scranton to raise a family. Without a webmaster, recordist, or any funds, the Grief Brothers seemed dead in the water, and their fans gave up on them after a few months of inactivity.
A ray of hope shone through when Nicodemus got a raise to $8.00 per hour at his warehouse job, and soon they had enough money to hire Ed James of Skull Hill Records, a record producer who had worked with collegiate blues phenom Avant Johnson, and webmaster Tim Frank.
Thanks to James' excellent work on "Weary Hobo," the Grief Brothers had another hit and were ready to play a few paid gigs to shore up their reputation (which had been based solely on the free performances they gave for drifters in the park and on their Web site). They bought matching blond Rickenbacker guitars and planned to "go electric" on their next record, the Bakersfield-influenced platter 'Hot Cats On Top.'
This revival was doomed. "Stillborn" Bobby Grief was killed in February 2007 under terrible and truly awful circumstances. An allegorical account written by a fan at Ten Thousand Percent can be found on that site. Bobby's tragic and untimely death earned him one last bit of fame : "Stillborn" Bobby Grief is the only folk artist known to have died twice.
After Bobby's death, Nicodemus moved to Scottsdale to become a sign painter, vowing to abandon music forever as he had been abandoned by his G_d. (Later, Nicodemus was reconciled with his G_d and came to see Bobby's death as the calling home of a suffering soul. However, the bitterness of losing his brother drove Nicodemus further into drink and he never picked up a guitar again.) Ed James' Skull Hill Records, having invested most of its capital in bringing the GBs back, went under and was bought by Recombinant.
Today, the Grief Brothers are remembered mainly for taking "Love Hurts" back from the plodding Scots Nazareth and for their original songs "Why Do We Drink?", "Faceplant City," and the powerfully ironic "Hideous *****." Their catalogue is deep with many other unique and inspiring interpretations, originals, and hilarious banter that needs to be rediscovered.
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