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Featured Band or Artist
Griffith/Holbrook
INTERVIEW:
CP: What type of band are you?
A: Man that's a great question. We have a hard time fitting our sound into a specific category. I think the genre we've settled on most recently is "folkgrass"; acoustic guitar story telling with an occasional fiddle.
CP: Tell us a brief history of your band.
A: Well me and my dad go back a long way. He made me famous in the 5th grade. I sang "The Little Drummer Boy" and he played guitar for me. I had a side spike and glasses the size of two metal trash cans, but I was cool for those last couple of days before Christmas break. Good ol' Dad. Then Brad and I met in Spanish class in high school. He needed to borrow a pencil one day, because Senora Gimenez sprung a pop quiz on us. I just happened to have an extra lapiz (that's pencil in Spanish), and the rest is history. We formed a little band called SonColored Palette. After about five years of playing here and there, we threw our weight behind Brad's efforts to record his solo album Here and at Home;(available at www.griffithholbrook.com) which is a great album. You need one for every member of your family. Last year, we thought it would be cool to try something new. Griffith/Holbrook filled that need. We recorded Ruin My Lifein our friend Justin Belew's (www.justinbelew.com) office. It's really raw and intimate. It has an edgy, lo-fi feel to it. Part of that is intentional, and the other part is because it really was a low budget project. Justin produced the album for us, and actually played a ton of stuff on the record. He's playing violin, keys, accordion, penny whistle, quena flute, and whatever else he can find with us now. Adding him as a fourth piece has really enhanced our live show. So that makes four of us: Brad, Billy, Jim, and Justin.
CP: Who are your musical influences?
A: Hmm. We really like some of the newer singer/songwriters out there now. Guys like Andrew Peterson and Derek Webb. Then there are bands like Caedmon's Call and Simon & Garfunkel. We'd have to give a nod to Rich Mullins, too and probably even some James Taylor. Musical influences vary for each of us, though. And they change some, too. Lately I've been listening to a lot of Sufjan Stevens. Justin is a huge David Wilcox fan. Dad really gets into Eric Johnson. Brad loves Nickel Creek. I think some shades of those artists and others find their way into our sound.
CP: What inspires Griffith/Holbrook to do what you do?
A: Another excellent question. Our hope is to inspire each other. We absolutely love to get together and play music. That alone is pretty inspiring. But really, there's a lot that happens to inspire us to keep going. We find inspiration in relationships. That's what life comes down to I guess. We tout Christianity as relational. And it is. It really is. There's this amazing vertical relationship we can have with the Creator of the universe. And then there are all these other relationships that we are blessed to have: friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, strangers; they are all inspirations.
CP: What are some pet peeves?
A: Well this is just me, but I do have a short illustrious list: speaker phone usage on cell phones in public places, lukewarm food, broccoli, stiffing the server at a restaurant (gotta leave the tip man!), legalism, bad monitor mixes, hamburgers without cheese, yahtzee (even though Brad loves it), and I hate it when Justin beats me at Madden '06 on the X Box in the tour bus...oh wait...we don't have a tour bus. Or an X Box for that matter.
CP: Favorite scripture and why?
A: I'm gonna go with the whole book of Galatians. I'm flying solo for this interview, so I cannot speak for the rest of the group. But to me, the letter to the church in Galatia is just so timeless. There's everything from rebuking the believers who have drifted away from Christ to their own devices or lying teachers; to absolute encouragement and exhortation. I can just picture Paul kind of screaming passionately, "You are free! Don't you get it, you are free! Christ has set you free! Do not live like a person who is in bondage any longer. Live by the Spirit. You are alive." I am convicted and encouraged every time I read that epistle.
CONTACT INFO:
Brad Griffith or Billy Holbrook
Website: Griffith/Holbrook Website
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