Something Weird Is Going On With The Pedal Steel Player In June Star

Hey there… so… our web series is rapidly coming to a close! It’s been a whirlwind of a time… we’ve driven a lot of miles… talked to a lot of people… seen some super beautiful landscapes… and we’ve nearly been murdered 15 times by people looking at their phones while traveling at 85 mph! What a world. Check out the YouTube stuff! Comment! Like! Subscribe! Live vicariously through us!

Andrew Grimm
Limited Run Web Series... "Why Am I Doing Here?" Debuts!

Hello,

Episode 01 of “Why Am I Doing Here?” has been published… Only doing 8 episodes documenting a few weeks on tour with Dave Hadley! Watch the madness unfold! Will they get paid? Will people show up? What about their mileage? What kind of awful driving will they see? Will Andrew get better at editing video? Who knows? Who cares?

Looking to publish these videos every Wednesday! Live performances… mini-interviews… un-scripted trauma for everyone! Tonight, 3/27 we play Taffy’s of Eaton in Eaton Ohio! Killah!

This episode is all about what we’re trying to do… oh the possibilities, a little sneak peek at what we’re up to!

Andrew Grimm
Andrew Grimm Has 'Already Read' Britney Spears' Memoir & Is 'Nonplussed' for Its Release: 'I Don't Know Her'

Hey hey… we played Brooklyn on Thursday October 12th… here’s a video I cobbled together in all its flaws and glory. We didn’t make any money so, if you are inclined… VENMO @junestarband is waiting to process your digital currency.

Find out where we’re playing next by clicking HERE.

Dave and Andrew Play Music

Lead Singer from June Star Reveals The One Thing He'll Never Do On Stage

4.3.2023-NC Dave and I are still in NC. Today we’re heading to Knoxville TN to play The Blue Plate Special at WDVX @ noon! Then, later in the night, we’ll be playing the Preservation Pub. Good times for certain. I’ve posted a couple more Tour Diaries! Click on the links below… Thanks so much for listening… please know… we need your support… Venmo: @junestarband or for sustainable support: $5 a month with our Bandcamp Subscription

Smothered and Covered Nation Baby! Features the song “Without You Now”

Sports Ball Mania! Features the song, “Border”

Andrew Grimm
June Star Reveals The One Simple Trick To Being Successful On The Road

3.31.2023 -North Carolina

Dave Hadley and I are barreling down I 40 in North Carolina… our heading: Youngsville NC! We’re out for 72 days traveling across the entire US of A. I don’t have anything too pithy to say right now… but I’m going to work on it… the former President of the US was indicted yesterday… hopefully the process will do the thing it is designed to do.

In the meantime… I’m publishing some tour diaries and videos on line… check em out below! Being on the road is expensive and we don’t really earn what we deserve… so feel free to subscribe to our Bandcamp page: http://junestar.bandcamp.com/subscribe. or VENMO us… @junestarband

Listen, Laugh, Love!

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Breakdown from Lower Your Arms… in sepia… we look more antique than ever!

Tour Diary 02: with Pope of Mexico!!!! Why am I gaining weight? USA!

Andrew Grimm
Old Men Play Songs About Aging and Loneliness While Young Folks Dance Whimsically: Somewhere Robert Herrick is Smiling or Grimacing

11.29.2022 — Somewhere, TN

Dave and I are heading down to Murphy NC to play at the Parson’s Pub! Good times… in the meantime, I was alerted to this live video posted from our show at the Surfside 7 in Fort Collins… what a fun night! The local band Spliff Tank opened… they were great, LOUD and had two drummers that shared a crash cymbal… what fun!

Rawk

The video posted to YouTube is the song, “Boys in Trouble” a song I wrote after reading the Bob Mehr biography on the Replacements Trouble Boys. I focused on the idea that no matter how many times you shoot yourself in the foot… you can still move forward… sort of.

There is a bittersweetness to loneliness, too. The idea that “someday you’ll find yourself alone/waking up, staring at your phone” is more cautionary I suppose… that kind of, “blink and you’ll miss it” moment that we hear people jabber about when we were young… and maybe we didn't realize that time passing quickly phenomenon so much as being a thing… but now that we’re no longer young… we’re in the very position we were warned of. Irony is not dead. Yet.

Young ladies dance as old men warn them: gather ye rosebuds while you can.

Andrew Grimm
June Star - Arrival: A gutsy EP that pulls out a lot of emotion - Review

New review from Alternate Route: “Stripped down and weary, file the latest from June Star into the pseudo-Folk world. Yet there’s also a Southern Gothic element, where a sad, dark vibe is pushed out of every stripped-down cut. The EP Arrival is quiet and sparse, the songs of Andrew Grimm gut wrenching and tough, steady, solid, and slow.” —Brian Liggett. Link to the full review.

Please… sustainable support here at our h

Andrew Grimm
Blo Back Gallery Covered My Norman, OK Emotional Deficit

Some day when I grow up I want to GWAR everyone.

11.16.2022

—Laramie, Wyoming

While Dave and I are going 80mph towards Casper, WY I thought I’d give you a little snapshot from our first Pueblo show.

Neither of us had ever been to Pueblo, Colorado before… so let’ start there. It was as I had imagined it: wind blown, sun blasted, strangely calm. My only recollection of Pueblo was those public information commercials:

So the Blo Back Gallery is in a fairly sparse neighborhood, a little bit off the main drag of the town… dusty stuff… a bar and a Sonic sit across the way, waiting for folks to wander in. Dave and I got there early and ended up over at a place called Brue’s Alley… where they serve breakfast burritos all day… and like everything we ate in this region so far, it was smothered in green chiles… which, and to be expected, is pretty much the norm with anything in Pueblo.

For the show… a small crowd gathered in and with the help of a good sound guy, Zach… we launched into our set with a warm and welcoming response from the crowd. What a change… what a salve… balm… ipecac purging the stinging experiences we had just had. By the way, Kirby’s Beer Store in Wichita the night before was great… I mean super great… and then Blo Back was a one-two inch that helped TKO the bad feelings I had been navigating.

See… playing to an empty room is really something… playing to people is exactly the other thing… a true dynamic that creates a palpable energy… I don’t have to remind myself as to why I’m doing the thing I’m doing… I just do it… It’s not an adrenaline rush… maybe a drip, but I play better and it means more when there’s someone in the room with you.

That’s why online shows during the pandemic were so pathetic… it was pretense and artifice… if you were to see the real emotions I was feeling during the pandemic I would have live streamed me pounding beers, rolling my eyes at the then President, and shaking my head saying, “Man… he’s gonna kill a lot of people with his actions/inactions.”

By the way… so you know… I’m not bashing the former President, there’s nothing I can say about him that will change anything, it isn’t worth my time and energy… it’s the policies he enacted that I’m willing to bash and debate, and by debate I mean debunk and dismiss. Most of my news sources are triple checked, for twenty years I taught research writing and argument, and, and… I look at all first reports with a bit of skepticism… I usually wait until the dust settles before getting angry or happy about news… there is such a rush to get the scoop to please advertisers with views and clicks that the idea of disseminating pertinent information in a timely and responsible manner gets lost cuz everyone is busy serving their own master… and usually that master is money. Motherfucking money. I wrote a song about it…

That’s Roscoe Ambel producing and playing guitars… mixing and all that jazz… he’s a world class producer and called me during these remote sessions to tell me that I’m, “saying motherfucker all wrong.” Do pick up his record Lakeside. I’ll talk more about him later on in one of my “Friend of Mine” features.

Anyhow… back to money… even as we sit on a climate change precipice and people are ringing the alarms… we can’t seem to find a way to do the right thing in order to change our present course from disaster to one of survival… Here is a fairly radical perspective on how we globally address the situation… and that is to help all under-developed and struggling nations become energy independent with wind and solar… then work on our own shit to reduce our carbon emissions to zero. It’s not like we can’t do it. We could. Certainly this idea is radical because the conventional process is not going to work because all of our conventions are tied into the zealous fervor of money worship. The first argument someone would make is, “That’s impossible because it’ll be so expensive.” They are right, it wouldn’t be easy and it would be expensive… I write all this while hearing those questions in my head, “Who would pay for it, and why should we help out people who can’t help themselves?”

I’ll answer the second question first. Sitting in a small theater in Baltimore I watched a great puppet/play type thing from Alex and Olmstead called Marooned! and in the narrative a space traveler, in the future, gets marooned on a barren planet and one point, they meet the “Cosmic Peanut,” a seemingly omnipotent celestial being who has the voice of a child… and during their interaction the peanut says, “The meaning of life is helping…” And, as I sat in the audience it really became clear to me… the one thing that has brought me joy and satisfaction in life, other than Twix bars, is helping other people. All the years of teaching… was about helping… I think about all of my friendships and they were all about helping each other… and with music, it’s also a way to help people… sure my songs are sad, but how they help is by saying, “oh, you’ve been sad too… you’re not alone…” So for that… what truly makes us human is that are hardwired to be around one another and to help each other… that is our natural state. There is no survival instinct that includes burning fossil fuels at this point… because the end result if we keep doing that is half mass murder and half mass suicide. I’m not sure that’s helping.

And for money… who’s gonna pay for it? Does money really matter at this point? Does it? It’s an unnatural imaginary value placed on goods, services, and access. Tornado don’t care. Hurricane don’t care. Rising water don’t care. Earthquake don’t care. Honey badger don’t care. When it is all said and done, I guess, but I’ll be long dead when it happens, people who survive or some visiting alien life will look at our destruction and marvel at what we built and what the absolute unconditional love for our god, Money, destroyed.

Which brings me back to Blo Back Gallery… which wasn’t about money at all… it’s a small artistic effort in a small town… and we attracted a small crowd, and we were all there for a purpose. A small group of people convened to hear what we had to offer… it was an exchange of ideas and emotions…

And for that, I am grateful and rejuvenated.

It’s a drop of water to keep the flowers from turning black.

—Andrew

Oh yeah… Why post the video of Gwar? Gwar not?

Andrew Grimm
Friend of Mine: Why I Love Girls on Grass, Great Music Makes Our Lives Better

Lead off track from Girls on Grass 2019 record, Dirty Power… play it fucking loud.

11.06.2022 Syracuse, KS

We’re on route to Pueblo, Colorado. Blazing a path to our destination is easy when the highway is straight and the landscape impossibly flat. Perhaps Kansas is the only place I would maybe empathize with “flat earth-er” ideology. The agri-landscape is only broken up by tiny towns, the occasional rusty mini-oil rig slow pumping someone’s desperate dream of fortune, and abandoned stalled cars. I’m not sure what has inspired me to re-listen to Girls on Grass Dirty Power… but here I am. I want to tell you how great a record this is… that you should go out and buy a copy.

And of course, some folks might say, “Andrew, it’s rude and presumptive to tell people they ‘should’ do anything.” I guess. But, here’s the thing; I’m not shooting for polite. I’m recommending something. I’m talking about something I love, and I think other people would like it. Ain’t no computer AI algorithm impetus. Nope. Just a real fucking human being who has has been fortunate, not lucky, to play shows with Barbara Endes and crew.

Before I go much further… indulge me to ruminate on the difference between being fortunate and being lucky. Lucky is a straight twist of fate or chance that is truly blind. Right/wrong place at right/wrong time. Pretty simple. Being fortunate, though, takes some self awareness to weigh what you got and what you might have lost in a moment. Anyone can be lucky… but to be fortunate takes brains because you’ve been handed something of value that demands and deserves caretaking, maintenance… something to be revered and preserved. To be truly fortunate is to honestly acknowledge and receive a gift fully aware that you have been given something in a world and a lifetime of emotional paucity and spiritual enervation. It’s tough out there… count the chickens and count the eggs that haven’t hatched… they’re all worth something.

Buy this record…

Context: A good friend of mine, Katrina, had been talking about Girls on Grass for awhile and I had sort of paid attention to what she was saying, and, for real, she has an excellent ear for music… seriously. I don’t think she has ever steered me wrong. But, at the time I was trying to figure out my own stupid bullshit. Regardless, Katrina booked a show with us and Girls on Grass in Philadelphia.

I can’t remember the venue at this point… it wasn’t the Boot and Saddle… but it was something like that. An impossibly dumb load-in up carpeted stairs and through skinny swinging doors into a room any band on our level thinks, “Man, no one is going want to expend the energy to walk up stairs make a left , make a right, push open those doors to watch us play.” I was sort of right: there weren’t a lot of folks there. Also… playing on bills with bands you don’t know could be disappointing in the same ways most folks would describe a blind date that has gone “cease and desist”/”restraining order” bad.

I also can’t remember who went first, June Star or Girls on Grass… but it doesn’t matter. I loved them. Energy, musicianship, attitude. I got a copy of Dirty Power their second release and listened to it on the way back to Baltimore and it is a perfect record. It’s one of my favorite records. In fact, I just listened to it while writing this post. Eric “Roscoe” Ambel produced it with a solid production and clarity of sound. And, furthermore, Barbara Endes who writes, guitars, and sings these songs is straight up a singularly talented, aware, and seemingly unafraid songwriter. I love having the top of my head taken off by a songwriter.

But let me get specific on what really shines on this record… there is nothing… and I mean nothing out of place. Dave Mandl’s bass lines do exactly what great bass lines are meant to do… support the kick and propel the song forward and… and… and… tie up any real loose ends at the end of a vocal line or a guitar part. I think really great bass players and parts are more than the “glue” for something. That’s some bullshit there. What’s great with the bass on this record is that it feels sometimes like it is on its own trip but without taking away from what Barbara and Nancy are doing.

Nancy Polstein’s drumming is a direct blast of rock. There’s an undeniably bedrock posture to it that says, “Yeah, I know… I know… it’s rock-n-roll. What of it?” Right? I’m not sure if I can accurately explain what I feel… or even what I know… other than, I can listen to those drums on their own and hear the melodies; I can hear the song in my head. Even better is that there’s no real studio magic, I’ve been in the room and heard her play a set. Fucking great.

I guess where I lend most of my attention is, and in this order, lyrics, arrangement, then guitar. Barbara’s songs range from deep dives on romantic disasters (culminating in a new self-awareness) to a POV “great escape” narrative told from the perspective of a pig. Yup… pigs are pretty smart.

The thing is, is that Barbara’s voice, both her vocals and writing voice, are strong and unique. I don’t know if I believe in the idea of “raw” honesty… more like it’s “bare” honesty… there is nothing she hides… or at least she’s not afraid to reveal… an ultimate sense of punk. Truly no fucks to be given…

Here are the lyrics to “Friday Night”:

You don’t know how much I adore you

I can’t even look you in the eye

I’ll just stand here in back acting bored until you arrive

You said you’d be at the show

When will you arrive, arrive, arrive

I’ve never seen them before

But I hear they are really good live

Let’s make our way to the front

This feels like a dream

The stage lights light up your face

This feels like a dream a dream a dream

They’re passing around a joint

And I know you know what to do

I’ll figure it out too

This feels like a dream

We’re dancing and I am hoping you mean it

I’m in like with a chick who likes good music

I know when Monday comes

And I see you again in the hall

We won’t talk at all about it

The best night of my life

Not a word, maybe a look

The best night of my life

My life

What a great song… there’s so much here… it’s funny, charming, romantic, daring… and plain spoken with a conviction we only reserve for certain punctation marks. There’s a palpable anxiety in waiting for the woman to show up… trying to keep cool, or at least look cool…the declaration “this is feels like a dream,” something too good to be true, and Monday morning not being able to talk to that person about it… that Friday night is a secret… something between just the two… not for public consumption… ironically of course it’s in a song on the World Wide Web… but that’s the great thing about Barbara’s writing… there are certainly, most definitely some winking at the audience if not an almost concurrent “4th wall breaking” atmosphere on every song that feels quasi-confessional. As if —for the first time ever—you have a voice in a work of art destroy any sense of dramatic irony by acknowledging to the listener that, “Yes, I’m aware of what is happening in this song… and I can laugh or cry at it too… I get it.”

Even better… is that consider for a moment that this is also a song about unrequited love… perhaps the first song about unrequited love that isn't about a heart breaking. Maybe… You’ll have to ask Barbara. But whether or not this is a first date… or a “secret one-sided” date (“you don’t know how much I adore you” and “you said you’d be at the show”) there’s no telling because we never really get the other person’s perspective, and that’s not the real point. The point is that we get to share something so personal to the speaker… we are given access to some bare emotions.

If you slow down and listen closely to this record… stop what you’re doing for 39 minutes and listen… the self awareness in these songs will make any listener feel fortunate for what Girls on Grass is giving them. Buy Dirty Power.

—Andrew

P.S. Barbara Endes is one badass guitarist… on this record she split the guitars with David Michael Weiss and acoustic guitar with Roscoe. That being said… she is so so so so great!

Andrew Grimm
Experience In Norman, Oklahoma Makes Strong Argument That We Should Consider Other Work

Blurry Morning

I’m mostly hurting myself, of course, and I’m not sure how to get around it.  It’s hard not to just feel like a couple of losers roaming America playing songs that no one asked for. -Andrew Grimm

11.04.2022 —Moore, Oklahoma

So, what should an artist feel when 48 hours in a town results in $30 in tips and a canceled show?  What does is it even mean to be an artist, anyhow?  You’ll probably be better off talking amongst yourselves on that one.  Seriously, I have no real idea what it means, or even why I’m doing anything anymore.

A few years back I tried to impress on some of my college students the importance of shifting their perspective of money as more of a perspective of time.  Time = Money… is the tired old idiom we should reverse: Money = Time.  We all have the potential to make more money; we cannot make more time.  And it’s with that sense of value—and many other factors—that I got out of the teaching racket and started focusing solely on music.  A few years later, a booking agent agreed to work with us, and we started booking some really long tours.  Two month long tours.

Those long tours were scrapped at the beginning of the pandemic, so when the threat of serious disease was mitigated by vaccines and apathy we decided to try again.  By “we,” I mean my good friend and pedal steel player extraordinaire Dave Hadley.

In 2021 we contacted our booking agent about heading back out on a few tours and we booked six months of tours for 2022 through 2023.  As some folks may have seen on our Tour Dates page we were really spending some time on the road.  The road.  An overly romanticized vision of underdogs scraping by on gas station coffee and sweaty shows completely triumphant in making their voices loud enough to be heard.  Or, as someone recently told me, “You’re paying your dues.”

Oh my god, fuck you.

I’m not paying any dues.  To whom am I paying those dues?  Like there’s some time-honored board of trustees in our society/cultural that will stamp approval on my music after a set time of being treated like shit?  Whatever. It’s more like I’m spending time I will never get back.

The only solace during these moments of intense disappointment is that I’m traveling with a second person, whom not only forms an integral part of the sound we make on the stage and the songs I write, but he is my witness that all this touring seemed like a good idea at the time, but the future gets sketchier and more unsure.  The stakes are pretty high, almost as high as most of the people in Norman, Oklahoma—that’s not meant as a criticism; Norman has medical marijuana, and it seems like every person we talked to had just smoked a joint.  And in truth, they had… we watched them.  Nothing wrong with that.  You do you.

But here’s the reality of touring as a nobody with some good songs and who has spent decades honing their craft—no venue names or individual’s names will be mentioned and don’t bother asking.

Our first night in Norman we played a bar… and expectations were pretty low.  A Wednesday night anywhere, in bar world, is rife with open mics, karaoke, and/or trivia nights.  For the most part, not a place anyone wants to really go and hear introspective songs about how I may or may not have fucked up a lot of relationships.  I get that… and to that I really start to wonder how the owner of the bar booked us in the first place.

Regardless, I am grateful for the opportunity… and sometimes those shows are really great.  This really wasn’t one of them.  To be clear, the people we encountered, the bartender… the one guy at the bar who tipped us and the owner of the bar were all nice folks.  There was a late start and some poor communication… we had a contract to play from 8-10pm.  There was option to play later; we opted to pack up and leave.

It is really something to play to no one.  Dave and I usually take some risks with intros and instrumental breaks, and sometimes we practice some new songs as both creative exercise and amusement. I always try to keep my sense of humor in check.  It is an emotional endurance of my self worth wholly unnecessary at this point in my life. But, here we are.  And, this sense of self doubt and worthlessness is exacerbated by the pervading sense that we have to prove ourselves a-fucking-gain.  (See Bruce Cockburn’s “Pacing the Cage” for an excellent take on that idea)

We knew all of this going in… it was, after all, a bar gig.  This experience isn’t what really challenged me. It was the next night.

Our second night in town we had negotiated to play an independent arts venue.  Independent. Arts. Venue: a dedicated space replete with their own mission statement: 4 bullet points about supporting art and integrity and some bullshit like that.  Earlier in the previous week they had contacted us to let us know that they couldn’t find any local support for the show, to which we countered, “we would still like to play… we could carry an entire night.”  I guess they weren’t having it, because no one showed up to open the venue.  We stood outside for awhile waiting… then went and got a drink at the bar next door… checking in regularly to see if there was any sign of life at the venue.  Alas, desolation.

I get it… it costs money to run that non-profit art space.  I get it… predictably—and from their own experience—no one in the 150 mile radius is interested in music.  I guess the thing that gets in my head, which I’m solely emotionally responsible for, is that “we aren’t worth anything.” Make no mistake, we are totally worth it… but the message I keep hearing is, “go home, we’re not interested.”

I’m mostly hurting myself, of course, and I’m not sure how to get around it.  It’s hard not to just feel like a couple of losers roaming America playing songs that no one asked for. But, we just keep doing it.

Is it fair to lay this at Norman’s feet?  Probably not… they didn’t know… I guess… it wasn’t on purpose.  However, we showed up ready to play… Some of this situation is also a reminder of where we are as a culture too… people are tired and don’t want to leave their house to see music they’re unfamiliar with.  It is too much of a risk that they might be wasting their time, time they won’t get back, on an unknown quantity.  Which is ironic… because we are totally willing to show up for an unknown quantity too: an audience.

I would have rather just stayed in that night working on a recording or a song than having shown up to a closed venue; that creative expenditure of my time would have been more worthwhile.  Certainly the next morning, staring at an omelet, it gives me a lot to consider for the near and far future.  We have another month to go on this tour… then home for four months then we’re back out…

I like to joke from the stage that, “We’re traveling America wearing out our welcome!”  Only… I’m not sure we’re always welcome.

Hadley Waiting

“I’ve got my hands in my pockets/and I’m waiting for the day to come”-Paul Westerberg

Andrew Grimm
10.30.2022: New EP Released, Halloween, What's Next?

10.30.2022: So, we’re back with a new EP on Whistlepig Records out of Detroit. Five songs that I wrote for the Bandcamp Subscription reshaped and re-recorded for a dusty sound. These songs are as much about love as they are about looking back. Not really nostalgia. More reflection and reverence, please do dig in and listen.

Halloween: Okay… so I’m fast becoming disenchanted with Halloween. What always felt like a fun, creative, and goofy event has really exploded into an event on par or preferable to Christmas… and/or the Super Bowl. Now, truly, if you’re into the Halloween thing, I’m not slagging on you… just talking out loud. So, if you love that scene and you cannot get enough of it… that’s great. You do you.

I’m just saying, from a touring musician’s perspective… Jesus. Every place we’ve played for the past two weeks has had three or four Halloween shows, parades, ghost walks, party parade… and so on… like to the point where you start thinking… fun is fun… but, is there a limit? For full disclosure of my self awareness… we are traveling from town to town… so everyone has their own schedule and individuality… so while we are transient our perspective is certainly going to be skewed a bit. So I can own that.

However, it really has created in me a true sense of pause in booking shows from October 15th through October 31st. We ended up playing a Halloween show in Minneapolis and it was fine… some great young bands playing covers… a great version of Van Halen’s “Panama” complete with an EVH guitar and 5150 amp… so there is that… but all the Halloween worship can’t help but lead me to think that folks aren’t entirely happy in their lives (duh).

When the moment to shine in life is to dress up as someone who is already dead… there are problems that need to be addressed. How? I dunno… but man that sounds depressing.

What’s Next? Check out our tour dates! Follow us on Bandsintown! and Subscribe to our Bandcamp… be a part of a movement to support independent artists and not soulless corporations! Here’s a picture of Angus… super cat from a fabulous AirBNB in Minneapolis!

Andrew Grimm
June Star Live Shot from The Lager House 10.19.2022

Live Shot!

Wednesday October 19, 2022 June Star played at the much loved and storied Lager House in Corktown/Detroit, Michigan.

What a fun night with long time friend and musical champion Don Duprie opening up solo. Powerhouse songs delivered with a weary sincerity you only deliver by way of a much lived experience. Love that guy… turning in some great performances as well were Bourbon Squirrel and Poor Player.

This snippet from the night is “Here We Are” from the new EP —due 10.28.202 on Whistlepig Records—and features some pretty weary singing if we might say so ourselves. Enjoy!

As always… consider sustainable support for June Star by subscribing $5 per month on Bandcamp. A boatload of songs to explore… and a shining sense of satisfaction that you are helping independent musicians, who happen to be real humans, remain financially solvent while touring!

Of course… you can always just Venmo us some digital monies… @junestarband (please… no Crypto Currency)

Thanks for watching,

Andrew

Andrew Grimm
Friend of Mine: Ray Flanagan

So… not that I quote folks a whole lot, but here’s a quote from Jay Farrar, “We quote each other/only when we’re wrong.” Such a great line… quotable —not to be ironic or anything— but it gets me thinking that I need to spend more time talking about people I know and what their music and art mean to me. Sometimes I’ll be a little technical… but largely I’ll point out what I like about their work and what it means to me.

The first person I’m telling you about is a guy we’ll be playing with tonight, 10.20.2022, at CODA and his name is Ray Flanagan.

I became acquainted with Ray about five or six years ago when I was touring through Cleveland and we was on the bill with June Star at the Happy Dog… where we got free hot dogs! I didn’t have the dogs but Dave and Kurt can give an account of their tummy woes after eating theirs.

Anyhow… Ray was a powerhouse… youthful, full of exuberant energy and an “anything is possible” disposition. Literally… that energy that propels him is rooted deep in an idealistic and passionate core that seemingly rotates at the same rate of the earth, but sometimes in the opposite direction.

A brilliant guitar player with a keen observational ear, Ray’s songs and performance left an impression. Through the years we’ve passed by each other at the odd show here and there… but I’m always glad to know that he his out there, pushing every button he knows in every conceivable way.

Recently he released a new single… “Be My Girl.” It’s a rocker in all the right ways… the “b-side” is “For the Love of You” which hearkens back to the sounds of great jazz pre R&B love laments. Really blown away by these tunes. You can find them on Spotify… but please go to his Bandcamp Page to Listen then Buy.

Andrew Grimm
New EP 10.28.2022, Duke Coffee House Performance, Tour Link

The single from the upcoming EP on Whistlepig Records is here… “With aching vocals and wistful arrangements, Arrival begs an audience of naked emotion with a level of confidence that could only sit in the hands of a seasoned writer and performer like Andrew Grimm.” Read the whole review of the EP here.

10.17.2022 Grimm and Hadley played at the Duke Coffeehouse Durham, NC… a wonderful time was had by everyone… and we mean everyone… all the world was at peace as they played… we hope.

June Star is out for 2 whole freaking months… check our Tour Dates page for where we’re going to be! Also… you can follow us on Bandsintown and get updates as soon as we post a new show!

Be Well!

Andrew

Andrew Grimm