Gillian Grassie

‘The Train’ included on Lebanon soundtrack, to premier at SXSW

// March 10th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Cool Stuff, Music, News

More cool news: “The Train” was chosen for inclusion on the soundtrack of the indie film Lebanon, PA, which has been selected to premier at SXSW this month!

Check out the trailer, and if you’re going to be in Austin, TX for the festival, stop by the premiere on March 14th.

Serpentine spinning on more US airwaves

// March 10th, 2010 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, News

Totally thrilled to learn that the number of stations spinning Serpentine in the US has doubled since December. Many of these triple A stations, including Public Radio East, have moved the album into heavy rotation because of your requests – thanks!

I’ll try to hit as many of these cities as I can on my Fall tour, but if there’s a specific venue or town you’d like me to visit, shoot me an e-mail at info@gilliangrassie.com. And remember, you can always book me for a concert right in your own living room – anyone can do it! I love playing house concerts.

You can now catch songs from Serpentine playing on the following stations:

AOL Radio National
KXCI Tucson AZ
KOZT Ft. Bragg CA
KWMR Pt. Reyes Station CA
KCMV Breckinridge CO
KDNK Carbondale CO
KBUT Crested Butte CO
KSUT Ignacio CO
KVNF Paonia CO
WFIT Melbourne FL
KKCR Hanalei HI
KDEC Decorah IA
WFHB Bloomington IN
WWHR Bowling Green KY
WFPK Louisville KY
WMKY Moorehead KY
KSLU Hammond LA
WTMD Baltimore MD
Maine Public Broadcasting Bangor ME
WERU E. Orland ME
KAXE Grand Rapids MN
WSGE Charlotte NC
Public Radio East New Bern NC
WNTI Hackettstown NJ
WBJB Monmouth NJ
WFDU Teaneck NJ
Indie SF Santa Fe NM
WEXT Albany NY
WEHM Long Island NY
WDST Woodstock NY
WOUB Athens OH
WCBE Columbus OH
WYSO Yellow Springs OH
KRVM Eugene OR
WDIY Bethlehem PA
WXPN Philadelphia PA
WVIA Scranton PA
WETS Johnson City TN
KFAN Fredericksburg TX
KPFT Houston TX add
KUT Austin TX
KWCR Ogden UT
KRCL Salt Lake City UT
WNRN Charlotesville VA
WRRW Williamsburg VA
Wyoming Public Laramie WY

luthiers and coffee beans

// March 8th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // News, Travel

Well, after three months in Mumbai, I made it out of India without a hitch, except that when I arrived in Jakarta and unpacked my harp, I discovered she’d been damaged pretty severely during the journey to Indonesia. On the back of the harp, near the top of the sound box, the wood had been pushed in and sported a long, ugly crack, split clear through, as if someone had punched her.

the break

This is the part of the harp that rests against my shoulder when I play, and it’s important structurally for sound quality. But – if I can talk about this without becoming overly sentimental – this part of the harp is also significant emotionally, since it is the point of contact between the instrument and my body; when I play, the sound vibrations travel through this section of wood to my shoulder and resonate physically in my body.

When I fly, I pack the harp in a soft, padded case that fits inside a second, rigid foam and fiberglass flight case, like a set of Russian dolls. Over the years, I’ve flown internationally using this set-up about a dozen times without any problems, so it must have gotten dropped very hard for this to have happened. It’s hard to imagine what exactly the baggage handlers might be doing to cause such serious damage to otherwise well-protected musical instruments, but David Carroll’s YouTube video offers some pretty funny ideas. I suppose it’s a bit of a miracle that nothing like this happened before, especially given the number of unlikely and inhospitable places I’ve taken my harp.

there's always one smart-ass at the airport who makes a crack about a dead ex-boyfriend. They always think they came up with it too.

Having had my fill of major Southeast Asian metropolises, and feeling not a little heartbroken, I hopped on the first train I could book to Yogyakarta, a much smaller and slower-paced city in central Java, and the island’s semi-official cultural heart. I was hoping that somewhere in this hub of universities, music schools, and gamelan orchestras, I might be able to find someone who could try and stabilize the crack until I could get the instrument to a harp maker and look at my repair options.

Sure enough, literally around the corner from my guesthouse, there was a luthier. I spent a couple hours watching him build acoustic guitars with a reassuring, grandfatherly countenance and a craftsman’s leathered hands. I brought my harp over for him to take a look at, and we discussed (with the help of a friendly local’s translation) how he might try and stabilize the instrument. At first, things seemed optimistic, but, after a few days of head scratching, he ultimately decided he wasn’t confident working on the harp.

I guess if you’re going to find yourself halfway around the world with a rare, broken instrument, Yogyakarta isn’t the worst place to evaluate the situation and regroup.

First of all, there is excellent coffee.

I’m still getting used to the grit of drinking it unstrained – which is how it is served here – but there is absolutely no question that Java’s coffee plantations are producing delicious joe. Secondly, and much more importantly, the people in my Sosrowijayan neighborhood are wonderful.

tony let me hold his pet bird

The Sosrowijayan neighborhood is pretty easy to fall in love with. As soon as you turn off the main drag onto Jl Sosrowijayan, things get dramatically quieter. There are more smiles and fewer hawkers. Upon turning onto one of the alleyways that lead into the residential part of the neighborhood, the sound decibel decreases another few notches and suddenly you feel as though you aren’t in a city at all, but a small village, with lots of adorable young children running around, friendly faces asking how your day was, and the old folks smoking clove cigarettes and looking on.

making music on the batik shop steps

It helps that I started off on the right foot by bypassing the restaurants and eating at the neighborhood food stand, which serves amazing rice, tempe, tofu, gado gado, and ginger tea, along with a plate full of fried chicken necks complete with heads that I try not to think of as staring at me while I eat my veggies. The flora and fauna in my G.I. tract provided by three months in India have made me braver than the average tourist, so I’m not too distracted by traveler’s belly to appreciate the dirt-cheap, delicious food. Lunch typically sets me back about 80 cents. The food stand is also great because it’s next to an open space where kids play pick-up football games (the kind the rest of the world plays, not the U.S. version) across from the mosque, and is generally an all-ages neighborhood hang-out. It also helps that I’m American, since Obama has a nation-wide fan club in Indonesia for having spent part of his childhood in the courty – there’s even a statue of a 10 year-old “Barry” catching butterflies in Jakarta.

mucking about with a siter

Within my first 48 hours I’d talked to a group of high school boys about their favorite bands (Guns and Roses, Metallica, Oasis, and a bunch of Indonesian emo-pop bands), received an invitation to a nearby village for a traditional music event celebrating the rice-harvest that’s particular to this region, been advised on the fair purchase price for snake fruit (4000 rupiah per kilo), and planned a couple of bicycle day trips to nearby mountains (read, volcanoes) and beaches. Taking pity on the harpless harpist, some locals also invited me to an evening jam session on the front steps of a batik shop. They played guitar and offered me a siter (not to be confused with India’s sitar) to mess around with. The siter is a stringed instrument typically played in Gamelan orchestras and the closest thing to a harp I’ve seen in Indonesia.

Togor

A couple of nights later, when (much to my horror and embarrassment) I found myself in tears over the situation with my harp, I was immediately offered a hot cup of tea and invited to sit down and talk with some new friends. We didn’t come up with a solution that night, but I was deeply touched by the sincerity of their concern and empathy, and I went to bed feeling a lot better after singing a couple English songs Togor knew how to play on the guitar (amusingly, these were “Summertime” and “Jingle Bells”), and learning a Bahasa lullaby.

It’s true that I can get another harp (and hopefully my insurance will ensure that I do) and that there may still be hope that my harp can be repaired properly, but even with a new back, her voice will probably be different, and I can’t shake the feeling that something has been lost here that is not replaceable. This feeling is especially poignant since I learned that Jack Faulkner, the man who designed and built my harp, passed during the fall.

sound check at the Edinburgh International Harp Festival, 2001

This particular instrument has been my partner since I was twelve years old. She has shared the stage with me at every major competition and performance of my life. I remember feeling nervous backstage at the Edinburgh International Harp Festival when I was fourteen, and how much comfort I felt as soon as I sat down and pulled her back to my shoulder. When I was fifteen and found myself living in Switzerland, alone for the first time in a foreign country, it was on this harp that I wrote my first song. She has helped me make music in the mountains of British Columbia, and in a whole string of grimy, smoky clubs in the United States. More recently, she decimated cultural and language barriers in Mumbai, when a young girl’s curiosity lead to an impromptu concert in a Western Rail suburban train car.

my best impression of a pack mule

When people see me lugging the flight crate through customs or walking through cities saddled like a pack mule with the harp on my back, they often raise their eyebrows at the idea of girl bothering to travel with such an unwieldy thing. What they don’t realize is that it’s not me who’s dragging the harp along for the journey, but rather the other way around. It’s true that I’ve turned down family vacations before because I couldn’t bring my harp with me, but it’s also true that the vast majority of opportunities for travel I’ve had have been provided by the harp. I wouldn’t have seen Scotland or most of the southern United States without the financial support she’s given me through touring and scholarships, and I certainly wouldn’t be here now, writing a blog update from Indonesia, without her help. She makes me braver than I am, and often takes me places I wouldn’t be bold enough to go alone.

camping in British Columbia

Despite the sense of loss, I’ve been trying to look at this as a moment of opportunity. Perhaps this is a good chance to pick up another instrument, something that could offer fresh ideas for the way I approach the harp and might even liberate me from some of the frustrating limitations and creative ruts I’ve found myself preoccupied with over the past several months in my songwriting. Maybe I’ll start immersing myself in electronic music and composing on my laptop. I might finally pick up the guitar, or the piano, or some weird little instrument I come across in my travels in China next month. I’ve always had a soft spot for the accordion, although I’d have to consider the repercussions of inviting that many more bad jokes. Whatever happens, I’ll keep you updated on my adventures.

daybreak at Borobudur