The Liam Grant Interview
When did you first begin to fall in love with music, more specifically the primitive style? Was this something that was relevant around your household growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years?
The 12 string I play now was my dad’s when I was growing up. He used to play John Prine, Lowell George and Neil Young covers for my brothers and I. That's some of the first stuff I remember hearing. That and my mom’s CCR’s greatest hits cd she used to play in the car on the way to my brother’s baseball games. She loved The Beach Boys and the Beatles too. We lived on the Penobscot Bay then. Throughout high school and college I rode BMX religiously. I ran a BMX zine, shot a lot of film and dv tapes. All my friends were older than me. They’d play a lot of music for me that I’d never heard. I think I was already really curious so that ended up being a gateway, learning from those guys. Crimpshrine and Cometbus and Berkeley hardcore. Bad Religion, Minor Threat and the Mummies, Negative Approach, Misfits, Bad Brains, Bikini Kill, New Bomb Turks, Hüsker Dü, Dead Moon and Minutemen. They introduced me to bebop and hard bop and free jazz: Hank Crawford’s “Wildflower” was used in one of my favorite video parts. Miles Davis’ “Pharaoh's Dance” made the rounds a lot. Milford Graves and Sun Ra, Mingus, Art Blakey. The beat goes on man. Being a part of that scene got me on the right foot and I didn’t even really know it at the time. One of my brothers introduced me to John Hurt so once I found Elizabeth Cotten and Etta baker, the Living Country Blues series, John Cephas and Phil Wiggins it was all over. I didn’t discover Fahey until a lot later. When I finally rounded that corner: Ragtime Ralph was kind of an unsung hero — that ace right thumb and his lifelong tenure to diy. Jack Rose of course, Harris Newman, Glenn, Gangloff, Bachman, Basho, Loren Connors, Peter Walker and Steffen Junghans. Peter Walker especially — without outing myself too much here seems like I’ve really gotten away with aping his technique on “Kenduskeag”. “Rainy Day Raga”, “Has Anybody Seen our Freedoms”? And those self released albums that are just floating around on youtube. That stuff really reformed my playing. Muhammad Reza Lotfi has become a central influence in the last few years.
Did you participate in any groups, or projects prior to becoming a solo musician? What ultimately inspired you to pursue a life and career as a musician? Tell me about writing and recording your debut album, “Swung Heavy: Gitarr For Fanatics” back in 2021 and how recording this record during the pandemic potentially played a part in its influence.
“Swung Heavy” is kind of a funny thing — Rob V of Pelt mysticism (reference Pelt ‘98 tour, Rob’s Choice) and I had fallen in touch with one another and were trading tapes and other bootlegs. Rob had been involved with a bunch of JR’s early music and helped put out some stuff of his that ended up getting shelved. When Rob and I originally started toying with the idea of releasing something in 2021, “Amoskeag” was the album we had in mind. “Swung Heavy” was the result. The foundational ideas of “Amoskeag” were there, but I was really just itching to put my money where my mouth was and start playing live more seriously — just refining this stuff and putting it in front of an audience. It’s how you get better. So Rob and I originally put that out with a demo tape/sampler kind of mentality. Something to pass around to friends and bookers and just get the ball rolling more generally. It’s definitely taken on a bit of a different life than anticipated. But you put these things out into the world and they kinda go on to have a life of their own. You never really know who’s listening to what, or where or how it's being perceived. In terms of other bands: I’ve always been really lucky to have Man Tragil and the Annex Blues Society in my backyard. The Don, Lew A, Tod and Karen Glemstek of the Suncook Symphony have all been extremely gracious to involve me in a few of their improvised live outings in the past, which is how “Kenduskeag” came to be.
When I moved back to New England I was pretty much going for broke. We had just recorded “Amoskeag” and put a down payment on that, and I was coming off of tour after living in my friend's wood shop for like 4 months out in Todd, NC. So when I got to Boston, Man T. let me crash there in the back room of the Annex. It’s where I met my girlfriend Grace and it’s why I’ve stayed. But besides that not really. Some harmonica for some friends' bands back when I was more into that than guitar. But you know I’ve loved so much music and been moved by so much music throughout the years and just been trying to listen all the time. Always on the search for stuff I’ve never heard, new stuff that's always coming out. But this was the first kind of music that I felt really captured what I was feeling and that I could participate in to try and say something about the place I was from and about my own life and the way I was seeing things. So it feels important to contribute, to say something with the tools that I have and it’s all I’m really interested in doing. It’s not a stepping stone into something else.
2023 was a big year with releases such as your debut on Feeding Tube entitled “Amoskeag”, “Run & Get Your Sister” and a live performance album with Ethan W.L.. What was the overall process and approach to bringing these albums to life? What did you ultimately want to achieve and express with the material more particularly found on “Amoskeag”?
Cool to hear someone mention the lathe cut. That cover was one of my favorites. John Hilling 1854, painted those three scenes of a violent anti-catholic mob incited by members of the Know-Nothing party as they burned down the Old South Church in Maine. Disturbing ties to today's climate: feverous xenophobia and anti-immigration sentiment during crushing economic collapse. I encourage anyone traveling up by Bath, Maine to stop in the library and see the paintings for themselves. Funny enough though that was actually released February 2022 and recorded really shortly after “Swung Heavy” — so 2021. The split with Gangloff was recorded around the same time, maybe early 2022, while I was still living in Boone, NC. But that didn’t end up coming out until the beginning of 2023 because of insane pressing delays. The split with Spiral Joy was recorded early 2023 and that came out half a year later. So I think “Amoskeag”, the two split 7in’s with Gangloff and Spiral Joy, and that live tape with Ethan WL were the big ones of 2023. In terms of “Amoskeag”: Family, the passage of time, the way things change, stories that were left behind and left to me. It's a soundscape of personal memoirs. A lot of those songs are about places that I grew up around, formative memories, stories and people that aren’t around anymore and my life that’s continuing on. It’s a way of connecting the past with the present. “Amoskeag” is a section of the Merrimack River, very close to where I grew up in New Hampshire. The word Amoskeag is derived from the Pennacook / Algonquian / Western Abenaki word “Namaskik”, or “Namoskeag.” It roughly translates to something like “place of many fish”, or “abundance of fish.” It’s where thousands of salmon ran the river during the seasonal spawns coming inland from the Atlantic some 70 miles away.
American natives have lived on those banks since the end of the last ice age somewhere between 40,000 and 16,00 years ago and the evidence really only remains in the place names and myths which have become so familiar to us that we often forget the source. Salmon don’t run those rivers anymore though, the textile mills that bore the fall’s namesake made sure of that. And although you probably shouldn’t even swim there on account of the water quality, my brother and I also used to fish there too. I spent most of my time catching trees and tangling my lines while Alec basically pulled bass out of the water with his bare hands. In 1949 when they drowned the Dead River Valley in order to build the Flagstaff Reservoir, Stratton-Eustis is where they moved the graves. The Long Falls Dam was passed through legislation and finished within the same year. The result was the hasty relocation of hundreds of people who had grown up, lived and died in Dead River, Bigelow, and Flagstaff. That July, about 300 people met one final time before it was all gone, surrounded by some 20,000 acres of tree stumpage, all cut and removed so that the reservoir for the dam could be free of debris. During the celebration the clearing fires blazed, sending smoke above the town revelers. Surely a reminder of what was to come. The story goes that Benedict Arnold on his march to Canada had stopped there in that valley and erected the flagpole for which Flagstaff was named. But now the towns were empty, the remaining buildings that had not settled with Central Maine Power awaited the inevitable. The school had already been razed. The church would be flooded. The Flagpole would be drowned. Within a year there would be nothing to celebrate, the last night on Dead River and then everything would be gone.
Dead River valley circa 1950.
What does your summer and rest of the year look like? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
Well I just got back from about 3 months in Europe and I’m currently hiding out in Farmington, ME for the time being. “Grant / McGuire / Flaherty” was just released a few weeks ago, a couple of real hot tunes recorded with Grayson McGuire and Devon Flaherty - both members of the Three Top Serenaders and of NC old time acclaim. All stuff culled together from blown out tape recordings we’d worked on through last year and early this year. Other than that I’ll be up here for a bit recording for the next album. Gangloff is coming up to New England again later this month to put some more time on the road together. 5, or so days headed up to the Carbon Records 30th anniversary festival and then back home. Long tour in the fall around the Grant / McGuire / Flaherty EP and that’s everything in the pipe for now. Would like to say thanks a ton for having me on and asking some questions. Some specific thanks Grace, my two brothers and my mom and dad and those who we’ve lost along the way. To Rob V, Joe Tunis, Travis Reyes, Mike and Cara, Grayson, Devon, Glenn and Nora, Kaily Schenker, Glen Steenkiste, Jon Collin, Holger, Julian, Norman, Ashton, Pat, Freek and Jan, Chaz and Fran, Jonny and Rosie, Glenn Kimpton and Morgan, Uli and Swantje, Dylan and Nick and all the guys from Kraak, and to the many countless good friends who made traveling and touring Europe possible. A huge thanks as well to Jesse Sheppard, Buck Curran, Tony and Krissi, Jean Neant, Stan and Lori, James and Raven, Dooley, Shannon, Trevor McKenzie, Matt Groce, Edward Gibbs, Michael Rosenstein, and Greg Davis, all the good people at the annex. And to everyone else who has helped organize shows, taken the time to come to shows and to all those who have supported me along the way. Owe it all to you guys.
“If you do nothing and believe in nothing, you're considered wise. But if you have high ideals and lofty goals, every critic and cynic in town is waiting to see you fall, or even just slip up. It's in their best interests that your story ends with an ironic twist. It proves they were right all along not to try, or care.”
— A. Cometbus
