Grandma's Boys: Behind The Scenes Of "Oakley" EP
Grandma’s Boy’s started with one member in the small town of Brandenberg, Kentucky and slowly gained members until becoming a fully-fledged indie-pop/indie-rock band in Louisville, Kentucky. Through this time; three more members were added into the band, a name change occured, another name change occurred, and then finally the last member was added. Though the band has shifted and changed over time, their love of music has stayed the same, which brings us to today, June 13th, 2019. Grandma’s Boy’s has just dropped their new EP earlier this week, which was named in tribute to their first drummer, Oakley. To celebrate the release they held a triple-birthday concert, featuring another local louisville band & musician (Boggy Walk & The Buffalos, Abbie Guard). The night was a success, and everyone I’ve spoken to has loved the EP. However, this still leaves questions for the unknowing-louisvillian on who these boys are, why they love their grandma, and how this EP was formed. I was lucky to snag an interview with three members of the band and find out a little bit of their history. Evan Harris, Ian Gordon and Noah Colston (unfortunately Justin was out of town. Sorry, Justin!) all sat down with me outside of Steven to talk.
“I started doing Pizza Life Crew as a solo project,” Evan Harris starts to tell me, when I ask about the origin of this whole thing. “Then I picked up Oakley as a drummer back in Brandenberg, and our first show was at Natashas house party. That was awesome. I kept playing with Oakley, and everyone kept saying I needed a full band. So then I was like ‘Fine, I’m gonna bring (Justin) Deener on, so its me, Oakley, and Deener. Deener played bass, I switched to guitar, and we kept rockin’ as Pizza Life Crew. The thing was, we started writing songs together. Then we added noah...once noah came on it was a different flavor we had to savor, we had to switch up for later. So now we’re Grandma’s Boys...sorry haters.”
Evan tells me about how Pizza Life Crew was a “failed comedy act” and how eventually the band expanded into “Grandma’s Boy & The Scaredy Cats” as a prototype name. When asked about how they got this name, Evan revealed it was actually all on his mom. “I asked her to send me band names and she sent me so many. Grandma’s Boys happened to be one of them.” He also tells me how everyone hated the name, but no one would tell them, until someone confessed to Evan one day that no one liked it.
As for song writing process goes, “The songwriting is pretty fluid,” Ian Gordon tells me. “Evan normally comes up with the songs, but recently Noah & Evan have been making songs together, changing riffs, doing their own thing. The process always changes.” I asked about influences on their music and Noah Colston tells me how he hopes they don’t sound like anyone, but he does draw a lot of inspiration from Queen, and Evan mentions his influences from Fiona Apple & D’Angelo. Ian draws a lot of inspiration from local musicians; Joel from Wombo, Karen from Grlwood & Brian from Mosquito.
The EP ‘Oakley’ features five songs on it; 3 that were produced by Noah Colston & 2 that were produced by Linwood K. Regensburg Jr. Physical copies are available, and the whole EP is also available on their bandcamp https://grandmasboys.bandcamp.com/releases.