Greetings and salutations. Thank you for joining us on Embrace your Storm and we’ve got another exciting episode for you, as always. And before we get to that, don’t forget to create an account on the website embracestormcom. And don’t forget you can send in your emails to hello at embracestormcom. Looking forward to those. Today we’ve got an exciting episode for you. I’m speaking today with Grant Malloy-Smith and he is a musician with a new album release that’s coming out, and Grant thanks for coming on today.
0:00:38 – Speaker 2
Hey, it’s my pleasure. It’s good to be here.
0:00:41 – Speaker 1
Thanks so much for coming. So, grant, before we get to the album and all of that fun stuff, how did you first get into well, I guess, talking to you before the interview, music actually your first thing uh, it sounds like art was. But how did you get into kind of creativity? I guess to begin with like as a kid?
0:01:02 – Speaker 2
you know, I don’t really know I think it’s just a compulsion that people who are creative in whatever art form that they, you know, I don’t really know. I think it’s, uh, just a compulsion that people who are creative in whatever art form that they, you know, prefer you just feel a need to to do it and, um, who knows why I mean. But you’re right, I was even when I was a little kid, like five years old I was drawing and painting and that kind of stuff and everybody just said, oh, you’re going to be an artist because you’re, you’re so good at such a young age and I could also play guitar and piano, even though I had no idea how to do it. I could just do it by ear.
But art was always kind of what everybody around me thought that I was going to be. So I just sort of thought that’s what I would be and I was until, like at the end of high school I really got bit hard by the music and I completely changed, even, you know, at 17. I was not even 18 when I graduated high school. So I was like 17 and I just had a complete change of passions. And I still like art. I still do it once in a while, but my main focus since then has been music, and that’s what I really love to do.
0:02:06 – Speaker 1
What was it about music? Was it like a band or a song? And you heard it. You’re just like, oh man, like you put down like the, you know the, the painting brush and stuff. You’re like I need to grab a guitar now, like was it something like that? We we heard a song and you’re just like you know, forget this. Or like can you?
0:02:22 – Speaker 2
you need to put your finger on it.
0:02:24 – Speaker 1
But do you remember the time, like what it was, that bit you about music.
0:02:29 – Speaker 2
Yeah, there was one moment where everything changed. It had been slowly changing over a period of, you know, my whole time in high school. I was just losing interest in art compared to music, and I’m not sure exactly why. But there was one moment in the last few weeks of high school where it was like a light bulb went off. And it’s going to sound like a stupid story, but it’s true and I think any 17-year-old boy would agree that I was walking. You know, when you’re a senior in high school I hardly had almost no classes anymore because I refused to take study halls because I was so bored. So I took every class you could take and I still had free time. And if you were a senior you could just like hang out in the middle of school where you had a big open air courtyard, you know.
0:03:16 – Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
0:03:17 – Speaker 2
Go out there and hang out. And you know, and one, I was walking over the hill that it sort of had in the middle of it and I heard somebody playing the guitar and singing one of my classmates, but I couldn’t see who it was because his back was to me. He was sitting on the grass, he has a guitar and he’s playing and he’s surrounded by people that are all listening, you know, and I just I got closer and closer. I said who is that? I mean, I wouldn’t, at that time you couldn’t have paid me a million dollars to do that in front of people you know, to sit and sing right play the guitar you know, it seemed like, oh come on, what idiot’s doing that?
and then I got closer and I saw that it was my friend, scott Sutherland, who was one of the a very good looking guy but very shy, you know, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Like he has the guts to do that. Even I don’t have the guts to do that and I’m not shy as he is. And I stood there for a long minute and just drinking this in in my eyes and I noticed that most of the people listening to him were attractive young ladies. And I looked at the ladies and I looked at him and I looked at the guitar and I said I got to get me a guitar.
0:04:28 – Speaker 1
I got to get me.
0:04:30 – Speaker 2
And it was not even a week later. I was I didn’t have a car yet and I was riding my bike somewhere and I went by a yard sale and somebody was selling a guitar for fifteen dollars, which is, you know, like one hundred dollars now.
0:04:44 – Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly.
0:04:47 – Speaker 2
I rode my bike home and I got as much money as I could out of my big bank and I rode all the way back and I bought that guitar and then I realized I had to walk the bike back home like two miles because you can’t and then that was it. That was the turning point that I mean it had been coming, but that was that one moment that just made it beef. You know, that was it. There was no turning back at that point that’s pretty funny.
0:05:12 – Speaker 1
Like it’s funny that you notice too, like the your friend there, like man, he’s a shy guy and he’s like in front of all these people and playing guitar. You know, that’s what’s kind of funny when I think, when people you know whether or not your friend like that was his thing, like he’s supposed to play guitar, like whether or not he’s still playing guitar, it’s kind of it’s kind of irrelevant to this uh comment. But like, once someone finds kind of like the thing they should be doing, even if it’s like at that kind of like moment in their life, even a shy person’s going to get out of their shell when they’re doing what they should be doing. You know what I mean I do. That’s pretty cool. Even your friend was able to experience that. Oh man, look at him doing that, he’s not like that at all.
0:06:05 – Speaker 2
He would go to. No, you know, he would stand with his back against the wall and never would ask a girl to dance or anything like that.
0:06:12 – Speaker 1
Yeah, that sounds like that sounds like me even, but I’m the same way too. Like I’m the same way too. I’m a quiet kind of keep to myself guy, but like I play heavy metal music and it’s like you get me on stage and I’m with my band. I’m the same way too. I’m a quiet kind of keep to myself guy, but like I play heavy metal music and it’s like you get me on stage and I’m with my band. I’m kind of another dude behind a microphone.
0:06:32 – Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re right, I mean that you’re that music I think especially music of all the art forms, because it’s so demonstrative. You know you’re really putting yourself out there and oh no, absolutely.
0:06:44 – Speaker 1
Like I was telling my girlfriend the other day, because I grew up playing heavy metal music and listening to heavy metal music. But, like in the last you know five-ish years I’ve been playing you know a little more different kind of like types of music blues and whatnot and I started kind of doing some open mic nights around the town that I live in and the first time I did it it was the most nerve wracking thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve played tons of shows with my bands, but it was a whole different story. When it’s just you all alone with your guitar and you’re standing on stage, I was like, oh my goodness, Like I was. I was honestly nervous, you know. And so it it is.
0:07:30 – Speaker 2
It is something to put yourself out there and, you know, let people, let people see what you got yeah, you know, I was thinking of that story, my high school story, when I saw scott playing the guitar. I was thinking of that as I was standing in the wings ready to walk out on stage at Carnegie Hall, like six years ago, first time I ever did it and I said, wow, from a kid who wouldn’t pick up a guitar in front of anybody else in the world to playing at Carnegie Hall, that’s a transition.
0:08:03 – Speaker 1
Wow, that’s amazing. How did you end up there? What were you doing there?
0:08:07 – Speaker 2
I actually produced a show with myself and two other artists and we did it there. We did it at Carnegie Hall.
0:08:14 – Speaker 1
That’s awesome, alright. So we’re kind of fast-forwarding a bit, but rolling it back to when you got your guitar. So what was practicing like when you first got to get guitar? So, like, what was like practicing like when you, when you first got to get the car, did you like lock yourself in a room and were you like playing until your fingers bled, or like what? What was that like?
0:08:33 – Speaker 2
yeah, yeah, I really was, because the guitar was so terrible that it was hard to press the strings down yeah, the action was probably ridiculous it was like a two inches.
You know it was a ridiculous, terrible, shitty guitar, but uh, but I forced myself. I did get a better one. I think by the end of the summer I had saved up. You know I did. You know, like every kid used to do it, to mow grass and break leaves and all that exactly. Yeah, trouble, snow in the winter time, and I earned. I think I got a guitar for $150, so it was way better than the, than the broken down old $15 one. But yeah, I mean I played hours a day and there was no internet when I was a kid so you’d have to go to the library or take or get a teacher. You know I didn’t have any money for it.
I know totally so, like today, you can go on YouTube and learn how to do brain surgery. You could learn anything.
0:09:27 – Speaker 1
Seriously, like I was telling one of my sons the other day, I was like man. If I had YouTube growing up, I think I’d be unstoppable.
0:09:35 – Speaker 2
Exactly. It would have been so much faster to learn the guitar if I had had YouTube, but I didn’t. So I literally went to a library and got a book on how to play the guitar. Um and but you know, if you buy like a book, let’s say you like the beatles or whoever you like, and you can buy a book of their music and it has tablature, which are little diagrams of the chords to play on a guitar and what fret you’re on, yeah, so that makes it real easy.
I’m a visual learner anyway. If you just see the tablature and you know the song already, so you know exactly it sounds wrong. Uh, and that’s how I taught myself to play the piano too, because I had learned the guitar with tablature, so I could see what. What notes are those you know in that chord? And then, find the notes on the piano go, okay, that’s.
0:10:22 – Speaker 1
That’s an a on the piano yeah, I mean, honestly, that’s how I kind of I learned kind of the same way. I have friends, I mean, I’m blind so I couldn’t read the tablisher, but my friends would read it to me and I would learn how to play various songs, and like that’s pretty much how I learned how to play guitar. I learned how to play songs and I’d be like, oh all right, I see how this is arranged, and then you just start making your own songs after that, you know.
0:10:46 – Speaker 2
Exactly.
0:10:48 – Speaker 1
So, like, what was it like going from? Like? Because you were saying, like you went from the kind of like art you know, drawing, painting and stuff like that to music. What was it like kind of switching your creative like outlet, like did you miss art at all? Like did you ever think about it again, kind of when you picked?
0:11:09 – Speaker 2
up the guitar, or was it?
0:11:09 – Speaker 1
you know, no looking back kind of thing well, there’s definitely no looking back.
0:11:13 – Speaker 2
I mean I still enjoy doing it. I just don’t have a lot of time anymore. I mean I’ll do maybe a painting every two years, but I, I mean I create a lot of stuff digitally now and on the computer. I create my own artwork for my album covers and single covers and all that kind of stuff that goes along with my music, my website. I do my own website and I do all the graphical design for that. Yeah, it’s just really to supplement the music. I mean they kind of go hand in hand. They’re like different sides of the same coin.
0:11:47 – Speaker 1
Yeah, I know that makes sense. So then when you grabbed the guitar and you’re playing you’re giving yourself lessons and stuff what kind of music were you going toward? What kind of music did you find yourself playing? I know you mentioned the Beatles, stuff like that music did you find yourself playing? Like I know you mentioned the beatles. That was that kind of stuff like that, or what did you find yourself playing?
0:12:10 – Speaker 2
uh, I have a very eclectic musical background because my, my grandmother and my mother were from kentucky and, uh, my grandmother, particularly her mother, uh loved the old style of country music and bluegrass music and she called it mountain music.
It’s kind of like what today is what bluegrass would be. Okay, people like people like bill monroe and ralph stanley and people like that, if you know bluegrass you’d recognize them as being like the major pioneers in the, you know, the middle part of the last century 30s, 40s, 50s Okay, so they particularly my grandmother had me listening to that stuff and I kind of I mean I liked it, but I kind of didn’t like it because everyone was liking the Beatles and you know rock groups like that more early rock groups.
You wouldn’t consider the Beatles to be rock today. It’s, you know, kind of pop music with twangy guitars or jingly guitars. But it was rock in its day.
0:13:12 – Speaker 1
By the time.
0:13:14 – Speaker 2
I was in high school I was listening to Aerosmith and much harder rock than the Beatles ever won Still, not even crazy groups like Alice Cooper, cooper and david bowie and I like the who. I liked all that english rock. I like all that stuff when I was that age, but I still had a soft spot for the the country stuff, even though it wasn’t very cool at the time. Um, but my record collection was very bizarre. I would have, like like Ralph Stanley and Johnny Cash and you know, led Zeppelin and, when I was much younger, like a Captain Kangaroo record from the TV show when I was oh yeah, yeah.
0:13:59 – Speaker 1
So now, so that when, as you’re playing along, like, did you ever find yourself getting in bands as you were getting into everything? How was that? Yeah, I did.
0:14:13 – Speaker 2
I had a couple of bands along the way, and by that time it was like the early 80s, and so disco had come and, thankfully gone, and because I hated it, and then there was a punk music revival and another wave of British rock. So I had a couple of bands in that time that that did that kind of music. So it was kind of like pop rock with a very 80s flair to it. But we actually did pretty well. We opened up for Steppenwolf, we opened up I guess.
Yeah, we played all over New England and we were an opening act for Elvin Bishop. I’m trying to think who else we opened up for. Oh, Jack Bruce.
0:15:01 – Speaker 1
Okay.
0:15:03 – Speaker 2
And a couple others I can’t even remember. The weirdest one was opening up for Steppenwolf, because they were, I mean, that’s pretty hard rock.
0:15:10 – Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, totally.
0:15:13 – Speaker 2
The main guy was John Kay. I don’t know if he’s still alive. He might be, but he was already old then. This is, you know, 40 years ago.
0:15:21 – Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
0:15:23 – Speaker 2
But you know they were big in the late 60s and with you know, born to be wild and yeah his band, though, was younger than my band. His band were all like 20 year old guys. That’s funny, and he’s this 50 year old guy, but he could still go out there and sing. But yeah, the audience came some people in the audience actually rode into the. It was a huge place. It was in west hartford actually. It’s closed now, been closed up forever.
But they would just open all these doors and people would come in riding on motorcycles I’m not kidding, and no, can do like donuts in the middle of the room, because it was just a big cement floor, almost like a aircraft hangar kind of, with a giant bar all along the back wall and a kind of small stage in the front. But they put 2 000 people in there and I was thinking, man, they’re not going to want to see me, this little kid you know with I don’t know what I was wearing, probably something that looked very not too masculine to them. So so I was thinking I’ve got to jump around a lot. I can’t be a stationary target, I’ve got to be moving on the stage.
I’ve got to do like a Mick Jagger imitation and just be constantly moving, so I don’t get hit by a bottle or something. But they were tolerant of us. That was a fun one. It was fun to play in front of so many people. Even if they didn’t care at all about seeing us, it was still fun to do.
0:16:49 – Speaker 1
What kind of guitar and amp were you using around that time?
0:16:54 – Speaker 2
I had a Fender Jazzmaster.
0:16:58 – Speaker 1
Nice.
0:16:59 – Speaker 2
I had a Roland. Of course I had pedals for distortion that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, it was some kind of Roland amp. I think it was the Jazz Chorus 120.
0:17:08 – Speaker 1
That’s interesting.
0:17:09 – Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of like you give me like a stereo sound with the two big 12-inch speakers in the front. As I recall, I don’t have it anymore. I don’t know what happened. I must have sold it sometime in the 90s. I don’t know where it is. Do you still have like electric guitars? Oh, yes, I have a 1954 Telecaster.
0:17:31 – Speaker 1
Oh man, that must be awesome.
0:17:35 – Speaker 2
That’s the best guitar I’ve ever had.
0:17:37 – Speaker 1
Yeah, I actually got a um, a G and L, a sat. Uh, guitar, a sat, they call it. That’s a G and L’s version of the, the Telecaster. And I, you know I mentioned I play like heavy metal and stuff. I love flying B guitars and stuff, but this Telecaster it heavy metal and stuff. I love flying V guitars and stuff, but this Telecaster it’s probably my favorite guitar. The neck on it is so amazing and I also I’m not a fan of any guitar that does a neck dive. If I put a guitar on and it does a neck dive, I’m going to hand it back to you Because I don’t want to wrestle my guitar while I’m playing it. So but that’s why I love the telecaster, because it doesn’t neck dive either. You know so right and I like the telecaster.
Better too than the less paul, because it’s lighter oh my god, it’s like one third the weight yeah, seriously, you know so. But yeah, I would have to say I think the tellies are like my, my new favorite kind of you know, body and style and stuff, since since I started playing them, yeah, I love it, I love it. So is that the only electric? I mean, that’s the only one you need, but I mean, do you have any other ones? Yeah, I have.
0:18:54 – Speaker 2
I have several others. I have an Epiphone Les Paul, but I hardly ever use it because it weighs like a thousand pounds. Yeah, no, I, if you’re in a studio, it’s OK, but because you’re sitting down, you know mostly, but put that thing around your shoulder for three hours, it’s like no, no, no.
0:19:11 – Speaker 1
And the Epiphone are lighter than actual Les Paul. So that’s I know.
0:19:15 – Speaker 2
I know I can imagine what the Gibson one is probably Mine’s, I think 12 or 13 pounds. It doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you wear that on your shoulder for a while.
0:19:26 – Speaker 1
Oh, absolutely, yeah, no, absolutely. You take it off after a night of gigging. You’re hunched over, need some ibuprofen. So then while you’re in the band in the 80s and stuff, were you guys like recording any like demos and stuff like that? Like, did you go in like recording studios?
0:19:47 – Speaker 2
and yeah, we did. Yeah, and back then, when people still made actual vinyl records, I mean the cds had come out but they weren’t, hadn’t taken over. Actually, we put one of our songs in a competition and it was selected by. It was a radio station thing here, it was in Providence Radio Station, providence, rhode Island. Oh, was it.
0:20:08 – Speaker 1
WHGY.
0:20:09 – Speaker 2
I think it was HGY. Yeah, they put out a Southern New England’s Best Rock or something like that with all the vocals.
0:20:15 – Speaker 1
Yeah, that sounds like it, yeah.
0:20:18 – Speaker 2
I still have that. I put that in one of those vinyl record frames you can get. That’s cool. That was fun to be on.
0:20:24 – Speaker 1
So you won a competition where you got to put one song on a compilation album. Yeah, that’s exactly what it was. That’s cool. Do you remember any of the bands that were on that at all? Were they all kind of like local bands?
0:20:38 – Speaker 2
Yes, I wish I was in my studio right now, I could tell you, but I can’t remember who they were. No problem, that’s no problem. It was around 82 or 83. That’s cool, it was a while ago.
0:20:50 – Speaker 1
I think the Neighborhoods were on it.
0:20:52 – Speaker 2
If you’ve ever heard of them. They were pretty big in the day. The Neighborhood were pretty big in the day, the neighborhoods, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there’s some boston bands on it too, not just rhode island bands. It might have been more massachusetts band than you know, because there’s more bands up there, yeah, and it’s a much bigger city so so when, when did you get to the point of kind of like?
0:21:12 – Speaker 1
because now you’re kind of like doing your own stuff and you’re like hiring, you know, like, like other musicians to come in on, you know, to record these, these tracks. So how did you kind of get to where you are now with doing what you’re doing?
0:21:25 – Speaker 2
Well, I kind of stopped the live. I didn’t stop it, but I reduced drastically my live performance, like everyone else did, because of COVID and I haven’t really started that back up again, mostly because I’ve been making, focused on making theme albums and they’re really time consuming. So because it takes me a couple of years to research you know what the top, the topic that I’ve chosen and figure out what kind of songs I want to have on it and what topics you know yeah like.
So it takes a lot of time. That’s really what I’ve been focused on is spending all that research time and then writing lots of songs, which most of which I don’t use, because you just can’t use them all like this album that I’m about to come out with about the mississippi river. I think I wrote 40 something songs for it. There’s still 16 songs on the record. It’s it’s more than an hour. It’s like an hour and two minutes or something like that.
Oh wow, which is very long for an album. Normally albums are, you know, 30 or 40 minutes. So I do a lot of work in that direction to write and create and arrange and produce songs songs.
0:22:37 – Speaker 1
Well, so talk about the Explain sort of the process behind writing your theme albums, just so the audience can kind of get to understand what you’re Like. Maybe explain the Dust Bowl one before you get to this newest one that you have out.
0:22:53 – Speaker 2
Yeah, in fact, that Dust Bowl one that’s the first one I ever did. It was back in. I started it in 2014, but it came out in 16. But I was writing a song. I had no intention of making a theme record. When I was writing a particular song, one day and it just felt like the lyrics wanted to be about someone who hadn’t the title of it is Never Seen the Rain, someone who hadn’t the title of it is never seen the rain. And so I did. I was I like the title, I just liked the way it felt when I sang it, but I didn’t know what it meant. When. What’s that really going to mean in a song? Everybody’s seen the rain, right, if you, if you can see, you’ve seen the rain right, yeah, exactly, yeah unless you lived on another planet or something.
I don’t know who that is. So I thought, how am I going to make that make sense in the song or maybe it’s an exaggeration, like it’s been so long that you know? You say like, oh, he never comes around here.
0:23:45 – Speaker 1
Well, literally he does.
0:23:46 – Speaker 2
But it’s just been so long that you’re exaggerating and saying you know this never happened or he never does this. Okay, maybe that’s what I’ll, that’s my angle, but then so if it hasn’t rained in so long, like what’s the story behind that, was there a really big drought in history that I could write about? You know, something to make to kind of connect it to reality? And then, and I remembered something about the Dust Bowl from high school, you know, but I didn’t really remember much, but I knew enough to look up the name of it on the internet. So by this time we have the Internet. So I typed in Dust Bowl and then I started reading and I think four hours went by.
0:24:26 – Speaker 1
I mean literally.
0:24:28 – Speaker 2
I spent half a day just. I was so fascinated by it. You know it was a 10-year period of history, almost basically the whole 30s, and the epicenter was on the Oklahoma Panhandle, but it it touched the whole middle of the country, all the great plains it was. It almost never rained, it was regularly over 100 or even sometimes 120 degrees and, uh, millions of people were affected by it because they couldn’t grow anything yeah, exactly growing and then they, then they did things to try to make up for it, like over planting, and then they caused even more troubles with that.
But it really was this perfect well, maybe imperfect confluence of events, like it didn’t rain and it was unbelievably hot and the winds were crazy, coming across the plains, yeah, um, and they would just pick up millions of tons of top soil and dump it into the atlantic ocean or on the cities in the east coast with these violent storms that would rage across the plains. And that just fascinated me so much. I said you know what I’m not, I’m not just going to make this song about the dust bowl, I’m going to make the whole. I’m going to make a whole album about the dust bowl. That’s how that really started, you know, like about 10 years ago, and I really decided that would make it easier to write. Because now you know, like I’ve scored a bunch of independent movies and I find that to be easy because when you see the movie you kind of know what it needs. We’ve all seen a lot of movies.
0:25:53 – Speaker 1
We can feel and, by the way, if you see a movie without any music, you’re like, oh man, what’s wrong with this?
0:26:00 – Speaker 2
movie. You don’t know what’s wrong. But then you realize oh, there’s no music at all and movies are terrible without music. You know, usually not totally. I don’t. I don’t agree that you have to have music every second. Some things are better without it. But some scenes, you know, are more dramatic without music. But some need, and especially like a chase scene or something like that, or you know a romantic thing.
So the movie kind of tells you what it wants. You know it makes it easy. You don’t have to think like, what kind of music am I going to write behind this gunfight? Yeah, I know Seriously. So by the same token, I think picking a topic, a big topic like, you know, the Dust Bowl or something like that, or the Mississippi River, that kind of tells you at least it’s a guide, it’s a guidepost. You know what you have to write about in general. Now it’s a matter of of paring it down, because you can’t write about every single thing that happened in the Dust Bowl or along the Mississippi River, or about, you know, the part of America called Appalachia. You have to write a thousand songs and even that you couldn’t do it. So the hard part is really figuring out what exactly to write about and what not to, because you can’t write about everything.
0:27:13 – Speaker 1
At least you have a roadmap.
0:27:15 – Speaker 2
You know what to do in general.
0:27:17 – Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s actually a really interesting way of kind of like finding a way to come up with songs or, you know, song ideas or whatever, like lyrically and even musically. When you have like 40, if you look up the Dust Bowl, you’re like, wow, I have 40 different topics now to kind of like cover. You know, I don’t know, that’s a really cool idea and way to approach that. I’ve never thought of doing something like that before.
0:27:44 – Speaker 2
Yeah, it was just an accident for me. You know just that. One song that I wrote about a drought led me to that, and then I, based on discovering what I did, I realized, man, it’s so fascinating, I got to make the whole album about it.
0:27:58 – Speaker 1
Well, I mean, obviously this was a good move for you anyways, because you’re on your third sort of themed album. I mean, if it wasn’t working out for you on your end, you wouldn’t be on your third one, I would imagine.
0:28:14 – Speaker 2
Right, I found that it really was. And plus, when Dust Bowl came out, we were talking before the show about the demise of CDs. You know that people are buying more and Dust Bowl came out at a time where people still were buying CDs not as many as before, but they still were buying them. The streaming hadn’t really killed all that Like it’s all gone now, but I sold lots of that, sold lots of CDs and even lots of digital downloads too. I think more than 28,000 copies of the record.
0:28:46 – Speaker 1
Wow.
0:28:48 – Speaker 2
It was on the Billboard charts for 17 weeks. No kidding. And the top 10 for 11 weeks.
0:28:55 – Speaker 1
Yeah, Wow, that’s impressive.
0:28:59 – Speaker 2
Well, I did spend a lot of money on advertising. I really advertised. I don’t have that money anymore. I don’t think I’ll be on Billboard anymore, but at least I did it with Dust Bowl. It was very successful.
0:29:11 – Speaker 1
That’s crazy, that’s awesome.
0:29:14 – Speaker 2
Well, I guess I don’t want to skip over the um the apple, because you did the appalachian one second, correct yes, yep, and my family on my mother’s side is, and even some on my father’s side are really from that region, particularly eastern kentucky and west virginia and eastern tennessee. So that was kind of a labor of love for me because I like that part of the country, not just because my family’s there. It is, it’s one of the most beautiful parts of our country. It’s also got a lot of problems, as we all know, and it has challenges like well, so does New York City, you know, so does Los Angeles.
Yeah, they’re related to problems too with drug stuff. Related to problems too with drug stuff. I will say it’s getting better in some ways. Um, but this now because of the, the border situation that you know, when I, when I made this record came out, uh, three years ago, and I wrote a book that went along with it and I had, I did lots of research about, there’s a song about someone um going through cold turkey withdrawal from fentanyl addiction on the record, a real cheerful topic, yeah, right.
But I did some research and at that time it was like fentanyl, particularly those opioids, particularly fentanyl were killing like 40,000 Americans every year and you know what it’s double that. Now, three years later, it’s like 78 or 80,000 Americans die of fentanyl overdose a year. That’s double, or more than double, the people that get killed in a car accident. So I think that’s like 30,000 or something like that. Wow, can you imagine that? That’s like a horrible statistic that we need to do something about.
0:31:01 – Speaker 1
Yeah, I feel like I saw this. Might have been five years ago or longer, but I feel like there was some guy that I saw he was making t-shirts, I think, to kind of like attack the fentanyl problem in in like I want to say it was the, because appalachian mountains is part of it is definitely in virginia, right yeah, the, yeah.
0:31:25 – Speaker 2
The whole western uh edge of virginia is in the mountains okay.
0:31:31 – Speaker 1
So I feel like it was in in virginia. This guy was saying like the fentanyl problem at that point was so bad. He was like he was like just recently, a bad batch of like you know, heroin or whatever came into the area and it was like literally like 300 people within like a day or two overdosed. Yeah, Like in that area, like wow, that is crazy overdosed. Yeah, like in that area, like wow, that is crazy, like imagining that many people dying and within a few days, just from you know, like I was like that that’s terrible. But he was how bad the fentanyl is in that area. I never realized that or whatever you know.
0:32:11 – Speaker 2
Yes, it’s really terrible and it and it will kill you, because it hardly takes any of it to kill you. Yeah, it’s hard to imagine why the drug, the people that are doing this. You know a good rule of business is don’t kill your customer, because they’re not your customer anymore. Yeah, it’s almost like an attack on the country in a way. We’ll give the Americans the tools to kill themselves without realizing it.
0:32:38 – Speaker 1
We don’t need to do it, they’ll do it themselves.
0:32:41 – Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, and we’ll make money too along the way. They’ll pay us to let them kill themselves.
0:32:48 – Speaker 1
It’s very sexy.
0:32:49 – Speaker 2
I don’t know what the solution is, but, man, we’ve got to do something.
0:32:53 – Speaker 1
I hear you. So like, how did like the second project go then? Like, I mean, obviously it went well because we’re doing a third, which we’ll get to in a second. But like, did you have a lot of the same audience that bought the Dust Bowl, do you know? Did they come back and pick up the Appalachian Mountain album too?
0:33:11 – Speaker 2
Yes, very much so, and I’ve made that record as a cd and a vinyl record, since that was kind of, I think, that year that that album came out, 21 was the year that vinyl records sold more than cds for the first time since you know, yeah, I would believe it.
0:33:30 – Speaker 1
I would believe it, probably because the pandemic and everyone was home and everyone’s. You know, yeah, it just sort of became cool to have records, like big records from the 70s, you know.
0:33:41 – Speaker 2
even my kids, you know, they’re in their 30s and they have vinyl records and their record players. Sometimes they just put them on a wall and look at them, you know, because they’re kind of cool pieces of art, you know.
0:33:54 – Speaker 1
Yeah, no, yeah, exactly. They make the picture disc ones, I guess to have all kinds of you know, instead of just the black vinyl.
0:34:02 – Speaker 2
They have like a whole picture on the actual, yeah, true, yeah, yeah. Plus what.
I really liked when I was a kid was the liner notes. You know you could especially if the record opened up, you know, and then it was like a few pages of pictures and some notes and that was always fast. That’s the thing when you’re a kid you’d lie in your bed and look at that while you had the record on. That was part of the experience and that was really lost with CDs Pretty much lost because they’re so small. Yeah exactly. And then now with streaming, it’s really lost.
0:34:31 – Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean they have like the lyric box on the streaming app or whatever, but it’s not the same.
0:34:39 – Speaker 2
No, there’s something about holding it in your hand too. That’s different from a digital thing or on screen. It’s just a more visceral, more organic experience.
0:34:50 – Speaker 1
Was the music on the Dust Bowl album and the music on the Appalachian. Were they similar? Were they different? Did you?
0:35:00 – Speaker 2
approach it differently. Musically between the two albums they’re pretty similar. I would say they’re both American. That’s what I’ve been doing now for 20 years is American roots music which no one really knows what it means. It’s also called Americana music. It means if it’s not exactly country and it’s not exactly folk and it’s not exactly bluegrass and it’s not exactly the blues, but it is an American form. They just put it into that. I see it’s always called Americana or American roots. So it’s got touches of all those things in it. So like, for example, the Dust Bowl is more, a little bit more Western sounding, because it is that’s where it was.
Yeah yeah, appalachia is definitely more bluegrassy and that kind of feel, rootsy feel. And then now the new record, mississippi, because you know the Mississippi River is the birthplace of the blues, you know from Memphis all the way down to Delta Blues right or whatever. Exactly so. There’s a strong, more of a blues influence that I’ve ever done before and it’s a lot of fun to do.
0:36:07 – Speaker 1
So like. So, coming to this album and the Mississippi album you mentioned before, like you’re like, oh, I actually just got back from Nashville because I was before the interview I was like, oh what, you live in the Nashville area. So you were saying you recorded this album down in Nashville and you hired, like like some of the top musicians to play this album, right, yeah, that’s what I’ve done with all the theme records, but this one I went beyond Nashville and recorded also in Memphis and New Orleans.
0:36:34 – Speaker 2
I wanted to record you, to record by the river with those kind of musicians.
0:36:39 – Speaker 1
I’ve got a lot of horns.
0:36:40 – Speaker 2
I’ve never really had horn sections on my albums before, but when you do the blues you’ve got to have some horns.
0:36:46 – Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly.
0:36:48 – Speaker 2
I’ve got three very bluesy songs and I recorded the horn sections, one in Nashville, one in Memphis and actually at Sun Studio, which is a legendary. That’s where Elvis made his first record and it’s still a recording studio. I think they do tours in the daytime, but then after 5 or 6 o’clock at night it’s a recording studio and it looks exactly like it looked when Elvis was in there. They haven’t changed hardly anything. There’s a computer in the control room, but that’s it. They have everything that looks like 1965. It’s unbelievable, it really is.
And I recorded another horn section down in New Orleans, just a few blocks from the river, and I just wanted to give it. I don’t know if that really made any difference, but to me it feels like it made a difference because I recorded, you know, within the rock distance of the river.
0:37:41 – Speaker 1
No, I hear you. So then with Mississippi, then these are different songs, like with the history of the Mississippi River. Then right, that’s what you’re doing with this album.
0:38:08 – Speaker 2
Exactly, it’s all the history and things that have happened. Of course not all of it, but even with 16 songs you can’t cover it. I’d need 160 songs. But you know the river flows. It’s not our longest river. I think the Missouri still is a huge effect on our economy, but particularly in the steamboat era that was the main way to go from north to south, you know that was the main way that people and goods were uh, moved and, uh, you know, trillions of dollars of goods moved down the river every year today.
And it started, you know, quite a long time ago but it’s, it’s been a significant thing. You know, even 10,000 years ago or even longer, when the native peoples were here and before the Europeans arrived, you know, in the, in the 1600s. I mean, they, they used the river for tens of thousands of years to, you know, fish and used, used for transportation, for for water obviously, and um, it’s been a huge influence on on the continent and the people of the continent for thousands of years, particularly the last, let’s say, from the 1800s, where it really became. You know, it really wasn’t discovered, and I mean it was, people had been there, but it wasn’t till, like the louisiana purchase in 1835, when we bought that whole part of our country today from france. It was a huge. It wasn’t just louisiana that, that what they bought from france for about 80 dollars, it was such a cheap amount of money, it was like, uh, like a quarter of the size of the america.
You know, we bought a huge tract of land and that really opened up the mississippi river to the americans as a transportation hub. And, of course, it had a big influence on the war. The civil war, yeah too, because it’s a. It was a main way that you know, know, if you could control the river, you could win the war or lose the war if you don’t control it?
0:40:00 – Speaker 1
Yeah, no, absolutely.
0:40:02 – Speaker 2
And the Battle of Vicksburg and the siege that the Union Army did against the Confederates there that held that critical point of the river at Vicksburg, mississippi. That’s one of the main things that turned the tide of the war.
0:40:21 – Speaker 1
Like you also wrote a book along with this album too. I don’t remember what you mentioned during the interview, but you wrote books along with the other two albums too, right?
0:40:29 – Speaker 2
Yeah, each one gets bigger, like it was, I think, 20 pages with Dust Bowl and then it was like 50 pages with Appalachian Oats. It’s almost 100 with this one, and it’s a very big hardcover book too. It’s like 11 and a half by 11 and a half inches, like a coffee table book, and it has the history of the songs behind the songs, but it also has, you know, the liner, how the songs were made.
0:40:53 – Speaker 1
A lot of information about that. You know pictures of the studio, how the songs were made.
0:40:59 – Speaker 2
A lot of information about that, you know, and pictures of the studio and and, uh, people that are on them. Like, there’s one song that has janice. Janice ian wrote the song. She’s a grammy winning folk singer. Um, and I did, I did her song and she played on it with me too. We did that down, down in florida where she lives lives. So there’s all that kind of stuff, you know, behind the scenes, pictures and information.
0:41:19 – Speaker 1
So this Mississippi album, this isn’t out yet, though You’re like almost ready to launch it, is that right?
0:41:25 – Speaker 2
Exactly, yeah, people can preorder it, but it won’t be. The book is going to be available starting in about a week, because they’re going to be, but the actual album drops on August 23rd, so it’ll be available starting in about a week, because they’re going to be, but the the actual album drops on august 23rd, so it’ll be available at that time. But people could pre-order it on my website right now.
0:41:43 – Speaker 1
So what’s your website?
0:41:46 – Speaker 2
it’s my three names, like when my mother was angry with me, she’d say grant, malloy, smith, but in my case it’s a little unusual. Malawi normally has two L’s, but I only my whole family. This is a family name. It’s been around for a long time and we’ve always spelled it with only one L. Okay so it’s grantmaloismithcom, and I think you can do it with or without the hyphens between the three names. I think it’ll work, if you just type grantmaloismith as one wordcom.
0:42:16 – Speaker 1
Do you still sell your other albums on that website too? Oh yeah, sure, cool, cool, that’s very cool.
0:42:23 – Speaker 2
I’ve got plenty of CDs because people stopped buying them. Yeah.
0:42:27 – Speaker 1
Still got a bunch, so August 23rd the album’s going to be released. The book’s going to come out next week. That’s exciting. Is there anything else you wanted to cover, Grant or go over or discuss anything I might have overlooked?
0:42:47 – Speaker 2
I don’t think so. I covered a lot of ground. It’s a pleasure to talk with you today.
0:42:53 – Speaker 1
Yeah, it was a great time. I loved having you on. Let’s see what else did I want to? Uh, I think that I think, oh, oh, that was the thing. But are the on the 23rd, when the album comes out? Do you only have, uh, like l like records that are coming out? That, because I’m assuming you didn’t get cds this this time around from what you were saying, right, right well, I was gonna do, but the album is too long oh right.
0:43:19 – Speaker 2
I’d have to make two, and I can’t afford to make two.
0:43:21 – Speaker 1
Yeah, that gets expensive. Yeah, that gets expensive.
0:43:25 – Speaker 2
Yeah, but I’ll make a small number of CDs. We have to make CDs for certain radio stations and certain critics, and then I do sell them a little bit, not like the old days, but people, even if they don’t, even if they’re going to stream it, they like to have a CD as a souvenir or at least have like a physical copy of it. Right and they usually they want it signed. So you know, I think they just want it like a souvenir, which is cool.
0:43:51 – Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely, um, yeah, great. I wish you all on the on the Mississippi release and thanks so much for your time and coming on and hopefully you know people actually that’s how I wanted to come. He picked up guitar a little bit kind of later or whatever. Like hopefully someone listening is getting encouraged to you know, take, take some sort of action. Like is there any kind of uh, uh, you know suggestions you could give to someone listening to? That’s maybe a free to kind of take that first step, whatever. Is there anything they can, any advice?
yeah, you can give them.
0:44:35 – Speaker 2
Yeah, I would say a few things, probably not too original, but don’t be afraid of something that you don’t know how to do. I think we mentioned before the show started that you can go on YouTube and learn to do anything.
today, you could learn how to change the transmission in your car, perform brain surgery or play the xylophone, you can learn. You can learn anything. It just takes a little time, and you know time is the one thing we have that we can’t make more of. So you know we’re here for a relatively short time and we should use it. Use it, do something, challenge yourself. You’ve got nothing to lose.
0:45:15 – Speaker 1
Yeah, don’t be afraid to fail, kind of thing right like no, you know. No, nobody’s like uh beethoven, the first time they sit down behind a piano or whatever. You know, no one’s, no one’s slacked on guitar when they first pick up a guitar. You know, like you gotta, you gotta put it somewhere, it somewhere, you know.
0:45:34 – Speaker 2
Well, you know what I think? Just just maybe to wrap this up, I think there’s something that’s a little bit wrong in our culture, not just our culture but around the world, in in how we perceive music and art, and what I mean by that is like my family, my Appalachian family Of course this is before there was really television or even some radio. They could only listen to a little bit per day. They would sit on their porches and play music, you know, and everybody had some kind of instrument and not everybody was very good, but that didn’t matter.
It’s a way to build community and express yourself, and I think today the focus is on oh, I have to. I’m never going to be as good as a professional Exactly, I don’t care. You should play it, just to have fun and share your spirit with the world. You know, don’t worry about getting a Grammy award or something like that. Who cares? Do it for the fun of it.
0:46:33 – Speaker 1
Actually, noah Grant, that is like the perfect point to make and I do kind of come up, I do make that point sometimes with other people, but I think this needs to be sort of like the main kind of thing behind creativity, because I think you’re right, this day and age in the world, creativity now is looked at how am I going to make money with this? Like you know what I mean. Like oh, I’m not going to be good enough at that to make money, so I’m not going to do it. Like that’s not that, like sure, like that’s a nice thing to be able to earn money with your creativity. And the end goal you know it would be nice to do that. But and the end goal you know it would be nice to do that.
But that’s really not the purpose of creativity, or I think even why we as human beings I believe we all have, everyone has a creative inkling in them, and it’s not because to make money, like it is to bring some sort of sense of peace or calmness or or something along those lines. I don’t want to say like a healing sort of thing, but like cause. You know I’m not a doctor or I don’t play one on TV. But I mean, I think when people join a creative outlet, a lot really happens for that person, even if it isn’t making money you know, I agree.
0:47:54 – Speaker 2
I think it’s just good for your soul in general.
0:47:56 – Speaker 1
Yeah.
0:47:59 – Speaker 2
I think it makes you a more peaceful person. In some ways, I think it’s just good therapy. Any kind of art form like that, whether it’s dancing or slam poetry, whatever you like to do, whatever you like to be a part of, it’s going to be good for you, exactly.
0:48:16 – Speaker 1
And that’s the perfect way to be a part of. It’s going to be good for you, exactly, and that’s the perfect way to actually end this interview, grant. So I thank you for that. I think of your words. So, if you’re afraid of failure, if you’re afraid of not being the best, whatever, when you first do it, put those things aside. I certainly wasn’t the best guitarist in the world when I first picked up a guitar, and I’m still not.
0:48:43 – Speaker 2
I’ll never be as good as I want to be you know.
0:48:46 – Speaker 1
But but that doesn’t stop us from playing, you know. So if anything, it’s kind of a driving force, maybe you know, to want to get better.
0:48:55 – Speaker 2
Yes.
0:48:56 – Speaker 1
But but yeah, so great. Again, I appreciate your time. There will be links in the show notes everyone to you know, to Grant’s website and stuff. I’m assuming you’re on Spotify too, is that right, grant?
0:49:09 – Speaker 2
Yes.
0:49:10 – Speaker 1
I’m on all the Apple.
0:49:11 – Speaker 2
Amazon all the normal places.
0:49:14 – Speaker 1
So just Grant Malloy Smith, if you just search that, they’ll find you. Yes, use all three names, if you use all three names, you’ll find me.
0:49:22 – Speaker 2
You’ll find nothing but me. There you go.
0:49:29 – Speaker 1
Let’s see, of course. Let’s see. I think that’s everything, do you?
0:49:35 – Speaker 2
have any final words for the audience. Grant, Just thank you for listening today. We appreciate it. It’s good to communicate with you.
0:49:42 – Speaker 1
Awesome, awesome. Thank you so much and everyone, thank you for listening, thank you for downloading and don’t forget to embrace your storm, see ya. Okay, grant, give me a second. Yeah, okay, grant, give me a second to hit. That was good man, you did a good job.
0:50:04 – Speaker 2
Thank you. Did you say before you were blind? Yeah, I’m truly blind. Oh wow Uh.