June Star Press Kit 10/14

B
I
O
G
R
A
P
H
Y
Ultimately, change is inevitable. In the five years that Baltimorebased June Star has been around, several members came and
went as the oft-playing band shared the stage with such acts as
The Silos, Slobberbone,The V-Roys, Marah, Last Train Home and
The Damnations.
A break was in order. In the winter of 2002 June Star took a
year-long hiatus and entered Phase Studios, attempting to follow up
Telegraph, the band’s critically acclaimed third CD.The resulting
disc, Sugarbird, will not disappoint those taken with a distinctive
sound that was described by the All Music Guide as “a satisfying
blend of atmospheric twang, hard-driving humbucker folk, and
‘Wayfaring Stranger’ bluegrass.” The forthcoming disc is slated for
free download or Web purchase from cafepress.com.
S
U
G
A
R
B
I
R
D
June Star leader and founding member Andrew Grimm, who continues to churn out desperate songs of love and loss, was joined in
the studio by Ryan Finnerin on bass and Jeff Trueman on drums
along with jack-of-all-instruments Tim Bracken.The session’s layered
instruments and vocals along with Grimm’s solid songwriting
produced the most ambitious and satisfying June Star CD to date.
The songs of Sugarbird continue to explore the theme central to Grimm’s storytelling—the heart and
what makes it break.The opening lines of the first track, “Shaked”—“The elements you mine/are
sistered to this cause”—launch the listener into an all too familiar world of questions and
Grimm bravely attempts to supply answers. “Sugarbird,” the title track, suggests that truth
Shaked
and healing occur in surviving: “picked up and shook,/by the roots/you held off another
Sugarbird
day.” As the album progresses, Grimm continues to grapple with soured relationships,
Giants
be they between a father and son or a man and his lover. In a departure from
Baltimore
alternative country, the jazz-tinged “Baltimore” is a gut wrenching personal
Acetone
reflection on playing dead-end gigs in Charm City bands, a pursuit even the writer’s
My Sweetheart
Home
own father dismisses. In “Way Down,” Grimm addresses the freedom that results
Ohio
from finally severing a pairing that has gone disastrously wrong.
Once Knew
Sugarbird’s twelve tracks are a clear indication that a long, long break is sometimes
Belly
Mexico
needed to reload. With a belly full of new songs, Grimm, Finnerin and new drummer
Way Down
Clark Matthews return to the stage, bringing their hard-edged blend of country, punk
and rock to those who have waited long enough.
P
R
E
S
S
C
L
I
P
S
All Music Guide
In Music We Trust
Alt.country.nl
Mixing the overdriven, alt-country sounds
of Son Volt with the heady, metaphorical
lyricism of Fables-era R.E.M.,Telegraph is
musically and lyrically meaty.
June Star’s brand of alt-country is as much about the
mood as it is the story being
told. Hard knock tales of
growing up and living life, June
Star keeps on chugging on,
writing about the ups and
downs of life, putting a
country spin on it all, and
making you feel as if you were
there.Through the mid-tempo
rock numbers that will have
you getting up out of your
seat and dancing to the
poignant acoustic pieces,
you’ll always want June Star
to sway you to sleep with
its oft-dark, still warm and
comforting sound.
Telegraph (Sonic Rendezvous) is the second album by
alt.countryband, June Star and let me tell you right
now: it’s a great record.The band around Andrew
Grimm, who writes songs that sound like home.
Somtimes it’s like they are sleepdrunk which gives the
songs a relaxed atmosphere. However, when they
want, June Star delivers energetic playing on songs
like, “Felled.” When the first song starts, you assume
this will be the next Uncle Tupelo-band, but as the
album continues, the sounds shift to The Gourds, and
before you know you’d think that Shane MacGowan
has made the crossing from Ireland to America.
Telegraph is mostly acoustic with a few electric guitars and some beautiful pedal steel guitar by guest
musician Eric Heywood. With subtle production and
mixing,Telegraph is full of small surprises
— William Meyer
The nostalgic country rock of June Star
stood out from much of the like-minded
albums being released around the time of
their debut. Where most roots rock had an
urgent optimism that made for sing-a-long
choruses and mainstream acceptance, June
Star had a very different vision of the
genre.Taking the Southern gothic imagery
of Flannery O’Connor and blending it with
the stripped down approach of later period
Uncle Tupelo, their debut Songs from an
Engineer’s Daughter was a dark reaction to
the alternative country scene.
— Bradley Torreano
— Alex Steininger
All Music Guide
The nostalgic country rock of June
Star stood out from much of the likeminded albums being released around
the time of their debut. Where most
roots rock had an urgent optimism
that made for sing-a-long choruses
and mainstream acceptance, June Star
had a very different vision of the
genre.Taking the Southern gothic
imagery of Flannery O’Connor and
blending it with the stripped down
approach of later period Uncle Tupelo,
their debut Songs from an Engineer’s
Daughter was a dark reaction to the
alternative country scene.
— Bradley Torreano, All Music Guide
Baltimore City Paper February 6–February 12, 2002 High, Low, and In-Between
BY GEOFFREY HIMES
One of the most striking songs on the
new June Star album Telegraph (Safe
House) is “Wedding Girl,” which begins
with a desultory strum of an acoustic guitar, sounding both Appalachian and
exhausted of hope.That sets the stage for
Andrew Grimm’s nasal, gravelly baritone,
which claims, “I don’t want to touch the sun
anymore/I’m a wedding girl lost in her dress.”
It’s disconcerting at first to hear a gruff
male voice behind these words, but the
vocal’s implacable evenness—as if it were
a medium at a séance or a reluctant witness at a trial—soon casts its spell. Grimm
wrote the song, and his fragmented
impressions suggest a young woman
attracted to a suitor (“amber in the coal,
brighter than all men”) who betrayed her
(“I’m a wedding girl out of her dress”).
And the tension between her attraction
and his betrayal is reinforced by the push
and pull of the swooning pedal-steel guitar
and the brittle mandolin.
“Wedding Dress” is based on the
Katherine Anne Porter short story “The
Jilting of Granny Weatherall.” Such a literary inspiration is not unusual for a band
that contains three English teachers and is
named after the little girl in Flannery
O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man Is
Hard To Find.” Mandolinist Tom Scanlan
and drummer Alan Zepp still teach in
Carroll County public schools, and Grimm
taught there for seven years before stepping
down last fall to devote himself to his music.
“As a teacher, I read Huck Finn twice a
year every year, and a lot of other really
good fiction as well. And that can’t help
but instill some literary ambition in your
music,” Grimm says. “Every time you read
a good line, you want to write something
of your own that’s that good.”
These days, the most comfortable genre
for a songwriter with literary ambition is
alternative country, which marries the storytelling impulses of hillbilly music with the
rule-bending freedom of ‘60s and ‘70s
rock.Telegraph prominently features
Scanlan’s mandolin, Grimm’s acoustic guitar
and banjo, and the pedal steel of guest Eric
Heywood (best known for his work with
the like-minded Son Volt and Jayhawks).
These Americana arrangements provide
the perfect backdrop for Grimm’s
fractured tales about telegraph wires
and fog-bound roads.
“Our first two albums were loud rock ‘n’
roll albums,” Grimm notes. “And after the
second one, we wanted to try something
different. It took us a long time to figure
out we didn’t have to be raging loud all
the time. I was listening to a lot of Richard
Buckner and thinking he was so powerful
with just acoustic instruments and minimal
arrangements. I was also listening to a lot
of bluegrass on WAMU [88.5 FM] and
thought that would be a cool sound to
work with.
“About the same time,Tom [Scanlan]
started sitting in with us, and I got used to
hearing our songs with his mandolin,”
Grimm continues. “So we brought him into
the band, and it just clicked. It sounded so
fresh; when you go to hear a rock band,
you don’t expect to hear a mandolin.”
When June Star played New Year's Eve
at Frazier’s, the quartet kicked off the first
set with Kitty Wells’ “She’s No Angel” followed by the Velvet Underground’s “Pale
Blue Eyes,” and ended the set with Gram
Parsons’ “Sin City” followed by the Velvets’
“Waiting for the Man.” In between it
played originals that mixed country and
punk flavors in varying proportions—
sometimes loud, sometimes soft, sometimes hopeful, sometimes bleak.
“It’s tough doing original music in the
local bars,” Zepp laments. “[It’s] tougher
still if you’re doing alternative country. It’s
tough to rouse the crowd when you say,
’Here’s another song about death and
heartbreak, and, oh, by the way, it’s really
slow.”
Zepp, 47, was already an English teacher
at Westminster High School when he first
met Grimm, now 29, who was a student
teacher there in 1994.They ended up
sharing a house and eventually formed
two-fifths of the rock band Factory Horse
from 1997 through 1998. During that same
time, Grimm also played in a bluegrass trio
called Tuscaloosa with Scanlan and Shane
Poteete. When Factory Horse broke up
acrimoniously, Grimm formed June Star
with Zepp and Poteete.
That trio released a self-titled debut
album in 1998. Poteete moved to North
Carolina just before the 2000 album Songs
From an Engineer’s Daughter (Hungry for
Music), which featured Grimm, Zepp, second guitarist Tim Johnson, and interim
bassist J.B. Chenoweth.
Tim Bracken soon replaced Chenoweth
and Scanlan made it a quintet for the third
album,Telegraph, though Johnson’s departure last month made June Star a quartet
once again.The new album was released
last November on Vermont’s Safe House
Records. Bracken has a solo deal with the
label and is collaborating with label mate
Robert McCreedy (formerly of the
Volebeats) on a duo album due this spring.
But the band is still going through some
growing pains. At times it sounds so much
like Son Volt that it’s disconcerting, and too
often Grimm settles for the Richard
Buckner model of droning, minimalist
melodies and disconnected, private-language lyrics. But when Grimm and his
band mates get past these poor role models and latch onto a real tune and a real
story, they sound like one of the most
promising bands in Maryland.
That potential is most obvious on “New
Jordan,” another track from Telegraph.The
song tells the story of a family that has
packed up all its belongings and headed
out for a new life in a new land.The tune
rattles and clatters like an old, overloaded
truck in its banjo/mandolin arrangement,
and the weariness in Grimm's vocal
evokes a journey of “miles and miles
scored on our belts, the fog won’t wash
away.” And after all those miles, the singer
discovers—like so many emigrants, pilgrims, and fortune-seekers before him—
that the “new Jordan is same as the old.”
D
I
S
C
O
G
R
A
P
H
Y
Debut disc from June Star … Recorded in Alan’s
Basement in October 1998 and released in January
1999. The songs more than make up for the dubious
sound quality.
Personnel: Andrew Grimm (vocals, guitars,
harmonica); Alan Zepp (backing vocals, drums,
organ); Shane Poteete (backing vocals, bass,
percussion)
Tracks: June Star, Cinnamon, Honey Slick,
I Remember, Hello City Limits, Giants,Turned Yourself
Around, Doesn't She, Realize, Muddled Under You
Released by Hungry for Music in 2000, Songs From An Engineer’s Daughter garnered
some radio airplay and attracted the attention of critics.
Personnel: Andrew Grimm (vocals, guitars, bass, harmonica, organ); Alan Zepp
(drums, backing vocals);Tim Johnson (guitars, backing vocals); J.B. Chenoweth (bass)
Recorded at Phase Studios
Tracks: Imogene, Mountain Top, All the Flowers, 8 Dollars,Tonight, Faithless, Find My
Way,Texas Summer Nights, Brighter Stars Shine,Tornado North
The year 2001 was a year of strides for June Star.
A record deal with indie label Safehouse Records
made it possible to release Telegraph.
Personnel: Andrew Grimm (vocals, guitars, banjo,
harmonica, organ); Alan Zepp (drums);Tim Johnson
(guitars, banjo);Tim Bracken (backing vocals, bass)
Tom Scanlan (mandolin)
Guest: Eric Heywood (pedal steel)
Recorded at Phase Studios
Tracks: Thrown, If I, Wedding Girl, New Jordan,
Felled, Shoot Down That Monkey, Leaving/Breathing,
Follow Me,Telluride,Telegraph
Contact/Booking:
David L. Hill
410.234.8888
[email protected]
http://www.junestar.com
http://www.andrewgrimm.com