Gillian Grassie – Singer Songwriter Harpist

NBC Music Box Sneak Peak at The Hinterhaus!

// December 1st, 2011 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, Music, News, Performances, Videos

Check out this video from NBC Philadelphia’s Music Box series, which features an interview and a sneak peak at two songs from The Hinterhaus!

NBC Philadelphia Music Box Feature

If you like the video, consider checking out other episodes from the series and sharing your enthusiasm with NBC Philadelphia to ensure that other independent artists can continue being featured! Many thanks to Vincent Gabriel Antonini for producing the series. You can check out lyrics to “The Canonization of Margot Price” and “Back to Your Flat” on the lyrics page!

Center of Gravity cover

// June 25th, 2011 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, Music, Performances, Videos

Hi All,

I’m back home for a few weeks after a long time on the road & hard at work finishing up the cover requests that came in for the Kickstarter campaign. I’ll be posting a new one on my YouTube account in a few days & making some big announcements about the new album soon, but in the mean time, enjoy my version of Yo La Tengo’s “Center of Gravity,” requested by some lovely backers (with excellent taste) in Switzerland. That rendition of the Morrowind Theme is still going strong too – it recently broke 58,000 views!

Much love,
Gillian

Bucaramanga

// May 24th, 2011 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, Music, Performances, Press, Travel

I’m sitting in our hotel in Manizales, finishing some delicious café con leche, & savoring the last few moments of our time in Colombia. What a whirlwind the beginning of this tour this has been! Since we left San Francisco a week ago, the Ramblers have taken six flights & are about to catch our seventh & eigth this afternoon to Bogota & Quito! Using planes so much for travel has been nice in that it allows us to visit many more cities & schools than we’d otherwise be able to, but it’s been harder for Brendan, who couples an astonishing amount of obscure technical & trivia knowledge about plane models with a mild fear of flying.

Ramblers being silly

Before we take off for Ecuador, I wanted to give you all some highlights of our amazing week in Colombia.

BUCARAMANGA

We began our journey in Bucaramanga, where we were met by our effervescent cultural co-ordinater from Bi-National Center, Juliana. We hit the ground running with a workshop at the Escuela Normal Superior with two big classes of enthusiastic (and energetic!) students. We worked off some of that energy by having them jump, walk, run, swim, drive, & ride around the verbs of motion in Old Joe Clark, & then learned some interesting noises for animals in both Colombia & the United States during Old MacDonald. I especially liked learning about the Chiguiro! Also, I’m always excited for the opportunity to showcase my super-realistic chicken sound, cultivated over many afternoons of serious practice as a child. In between the classes, we were offered a refreshing carbonated beverage called Malta that looked for all the world like cola, but tasted like a dead ringer for the milk in your bowl post-Lucky Charms. Brendan, Matt, Jordan, I were reminded of our time in Russia at the end of the class when all the kids rushed us for autographs & facebook contact info.

Jordan strikes a teacherly pose...

We were delighted to discover that the venue for our first public concert was the stunning Casa del Libro Total Museum & were well-received by the audience there. Our program ranged from rousing songs about Union scabbers (“Casey Jones”), to ballads about the hardships of growing up in poverty in the Appalachian Mountains (Ola Bella Reed’s “I’ve Endured” & Gillian Welch’s “Red Clay Halo”), to songs about the railroad (“John Henry”) and the range (“Home on the Range”) and heartache (“East Virginia”), to silly children’s songs (“The Fox”), and examples of “contemporary American folk music” when Brendan, Jordan, & I each take a turn playing original compositions. I also like to throw in a traditional Irish song called “The Blackbird,” which provides a good opportunity to introduce the idea of The United States as a nation of immigrants & talk about the relationship between some of the traditional music in America & that of the British Isles.

sound check at the museum

One of the main ideas behind this project is that, in addition to being a fun way for ESL students to learn through music, we feel that traditional American folk music is a terrific way to share another side of American culture that is perhaps not very well represented by our most pervasive cultural exports (Hollywood films, pop music, MTV, etc). The United States is a vast & complex nation filled with many different people with rich & varied heritage. The stories told in Folk songs are stories about real people, ordinary people, about hardship & joy & suffering & history, & we are as excited about sharing these narratives of American culture with other parts of the world as we are about learning more about the lives & history of our hosts & the students & teachers we encounter.

Matt & Gillian ramble through the streets of Bucaramanga

One of the ways that we like to explore new cultures is through food! Brendan in particular has made it his mission to taste every local specialty cuisine he encounters, which is how we came to sit around a small plastic table, contemplating a bag of fried ants. The ants were much larger than any I’d ever seen – each abdomen section about the size of a small pea – and (I can personally report) are crunchy, salty, & not altogether unpleasant save for the disturbingly tangible legs, which got stuck between my teeth.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dvFXwcT4uo&w=425&h=349]

After two wonderful, busy days that ended too soon, we packed our bags once again & caught a flight back to Bogota & then to Pereira (interesting fact: we will pass through the Bogota airport three times on this trip without ever actually seeing the capital city itself! Guess that means we’ll have to come back soon for a proper visit). Next update: Pereira!

revisiting a favorite Russian card game

West Coast Adventures

// May 14th, 2011 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, Music, News, Performances, Press, Travel

It’s a cloudy, early morning in San Francisco, and I’m sitting in the kitchen with the day’s first cup of coffee, listening to a quiet house.

morning run by the golden gate bridge

I’ve been staying with some friends in Outer Richmond this past week to rehearse with the ESL Folk Project in preparation for our tour in South America. I met Matt, Brendan, & Jordan last summer in Tomsk where we began our first tour, bringing a special program using American Folk music as a cultural supplement for students learning English in Russia. The U.S. State Department loved the project so much, they decided to fund us again for a month-long tour in Colombia, Peru, & Ecuador. It’s the first time that we’ve all been together since Ufa last summer & the reunion has been sweet indeed. Tomorrow morning we’ll catch an early flight to Bogata the adventure begins! We expect to be doing some blogging updates from the road, but I don’t know how regular our internet access will be, so I wanted to write a little post sharing some of the highlights of my past couple weeks in California.

Oh, hey there, Hollywood

I flew to Los Angeles on April 29th to visit my dear friend Rosy, who had generously offered to host a house concert for me. We spent the weekend cooking & then celebrated May Day with music, a feast featuring dishes from all the countries I’ll be visiting on the ESL Folk tour, & over a hundred guests.

That there's 70lbs of onions. I cried.

On Monday, fellow Fellow Ted & I visited the Caltech campus to talk about our recent experiences as Thomas J. Watson Fellows on a panel for prospective applicants. Here’s hoping one of their many intriguing proposal ideas gets funded next year! We drove down to San Diego & spent a couple days learning ridiculous covers on harp & guitar, playing them for dear distant friends on Skype, & sampling the finest fish taco stands in the city. Ted also treated me with a breakfast of matzo brie, which is kind of like Jewish French toast (and totally delicious).

Ted! You made Matzo Brie!

I took the train up from SD back to LA (and, as always when traveling public transit with my harp, talked to lots of curious strangers) & then caught a rideshare to San Francisco with a woman who managed to fit me, my harp (in flight crate), & a young australian woman fresh from the airport into her Prius! I was dropped off in the Lower Pacific Heights neighborhood just in time to play another house concert for a super fun audience featuring a surprising number of AmeriCorps volunteers. By midnight, I’d made my weary way to Outer Richmond where the ESL Folk Project has been living & rehearsing this past week.

Brendan, Matt, & Jordan

We’ve been working hard, logging several 9 hour days of solid rehearsal, learning lots of new material & lesson plans for the students we are *super* excited to meet in Peru, Colombia, & Ecuador. This time around, the U.S. State Department is organizing several large public concerts in addition to our schedule with the schools, so we’ve put together an entirely new program! Some of my favorites to learn have been John Henry, Red Clay Halo, Old Joe Clark, In the Pines, & Casey Jones.

lots of lyrics-learning...

In our spare time, we’ve managed to share several delicious meals (Jordan’s a wizard with a cast iron skillet) & visit the Sutro Baths, a 19th Century swimming facility that now lies in ruins on the Pacific Coast, not far from the house where we’ve been staying. When not making a hootenanny in the living room with the guys, I’ve also been learning cover song requests from a kickstarter campaign for my next solo album, locking myself in the (acoustically pleasing & quiet) bathroom to make iMovie recordings, & posting them on YouTube. One of the covers, a version of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Theme on harp, was picked up by the online gaming community & went viral, making this one of the most viewed bathrooms in San Francisco! Big love & thanks to Reddit.com, RipTen.com, Kotaku.com, The Elder Scrolls facebook & twitter feeds, bit-tech.net, & thousands of individuals for spreading the video like wildfire. I stayed up late last night learning the Ultima Online Theme (which was one of the earliest follow-up requests from Reddit.com) & posted it on YouTube this morning as a gesture of my deep gratitude for the outpouring of support that’s come from the gaming community over the past few days.

over 42,000 people have seen this bathroom!

We’ve already started getting some press coverage in South America, like this article: Ramblin’ Across the Andes.. Time to get back to packing – looking forward to sharing our stories from the road!

Much love,
-Gillian

sorry, Pickles, you can't come...

P.S. My next concerts in the U.S. will be on Monday, June 13th at the Rockwood Music Hall in NYC & Saturday, June 18th at the Tin Angel in Philadelphia. The Tin Angel shows have been selling out, so if you’re interested in coming, be sure to reserve your tickets in advance!

…Like in the Moving Pictures!

// February 12th, 2011 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, Music, News, Performances, Press

Video cameras are cruel and unforgiving creatures, but I’ve braved the cyclops on a few occasions in the past few weeks and done a bit of filming. Since it’ll likely be a few more weeks of editing before anything gets posted online, I thought I’d share some behind-the-scenes still photographs from the shoots with you.

I spent the last weekend of January in NYC working with Jazeel Gayle on a music video for Silken String. We built an enormous tent out of satin ribbon, kind of like a may pole sans the phallic fertility symbol. In case you were wondering what 50 yards worth of ribbon looks like, this is it:

I don’t want give too much away before the video comes out, but here are a couple other images from the shoot:

The other shoot I did was a taping for a new NBC Philadelphia series called Inside the Music Box. Gabriel Antonini invited me to come by the NBC Philadelphia studios, play a couple songs and give an interview. Filming always makes me nervous, but I really had a blast working with these guys.

I’ll let you know when the final products are posted online and ready for prime time.

P.S. Notice anything different? I’ve started playing standing up!

Masterclass & Concert in Chicago at Northwestern

// November 10th, 2010 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, Music, Performances, Travel

I’m thrilled to announce that a concert and masterclass has been added to the tour schedule for Chicago this Sunday! I’ll be giving a workshop on non-traditional uses of the harp for the local American Harp Society at Northwestern University, followed by a concert. Both are open to the public at sliding-scale prices.

Sunday, November 14th
Northwestern University
Regenstein Hall of Music
60 Arts Circle Drive
Evanston, IL
Room 117
5 PM

$25 participant fee
$10 auditor’s fee ($5 student/low income auditor’s fee)

Announcing The Do it Auf Deutsch Tour

// September 2nd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Cool Stuff, Music, News, Performances, Travel

I’ve been abroad so long I’m afraid I’ve neglected my North American lovelies – so I’m hitting the road!

From September through November, I’ll be driving all over this great land, from coast to coast, to play for you in venues, coffee shops, bookstores, cafés, art collectives, basements and living rooms.

I’ve booked part of this beast, but there is much that remains to be confirmed. Anyone enthusiastic enough to organize a concert in their town/college/home, put me and my harp up for the night, or help with promotion will have my everlasting adoration. Also, I make excellent gratitude-omelettes.

Here’s my itinerary (details for confirmed dates are under the SHOWS tab):

SEPTEMBER

9/5 New York, NY – Joe’s Pub – 7 PM
9/6 Cambridge, MA – Club Passim (Campfire Festival!) 4: 15 PM
9/7 North Kingstown, RI – Beach Concert! – 6 PM
9/8 Danbury, CT – Cousin Larry’s Café – 9 PM
9/11 Montpelier, VT – Langdon Street Café – 7 PM
9/12 Burlington, VT – Parima – 7:30 PM
9/19 Toronto, Canada – Tranzac – 10:30 PM

OCTOBER
*updated

10/1 Philadelphia, PA – House Concert – 7 PM
10/3 Washington, DC – IOTA Club & Cafe – 8:30 PM
10/5 Lynchburg, VA – The White Hart – 7 PM
10/7 Greensboro, NC – The Greenleaf @ Guilford college – 8PM
10/9 Lexington, KY – Common Grounds – 7 PM
10/11 Nashville, TN – The Bluebird Café open mic – 7 PM
10/13 Gainesville, FL – The Civic Media Center – 9:30 PM
10/14 New Orleans, LA – Neutral Grounds – 11 PM
10/16 New Orleans, LA – House Concert – 7 PM
10/18 Austin, TX – House Concert – e-mail for details
10/19 Norman, OK – House Concert – e-mail for details
10/23 Los Angeles, CA – Genghis Cohen – 7:30 PM
10/28 San Francisco, CA – The Red Poppy Art Center – 7 PM

NOVEMBER

11/2 Portland, OR – The Knife – 9 PM
11/3 Victoria, BC, Canada – opening for Kuba Oms – details TBA
11/4 Seattle, WA – Hibdo – 8 PM
11/10 Aspen, CO – House Concert – e-mail for details
11/10 Boulder, CO – Cafe Sole – 5-7 PM
11/14 Chicago, IL – Northwestern University Masterclass & Concert – 5 PM
*****11/17 Philadelphia, PA – World Café Live NYSC Showcase – 7 PM*****
**UPDATE! Due to extenuating personal circumstances, I will NOT be hosting the SongCircle showcase on November 17th, but Suzie Brown will be covering for me and the show is definitely still on. I’ll return to host the next showcase on January 12th**

As you can see, there is much of my itinerary that is still, shall we say, malleable? Take a look at the accompanying Google Maps and if you’ve got an idea that fits the general trajectory, I’d love to discuss it! Please share this with your friends and family and help spread the word. This is an independent, grassroots, fan-fueled (ad)venture, and I can’t do it without you.

fill my heart, fill my gas tank, fill my belly… I’ll see you on the road!

Love,
Gillian

* *Europe! I’m coming for you in the Spring, darling. I plan to pass some of those long hours on the highway this fall spinning German tapes and trying to learn the language of Rilke and Marlene Dietrech (hence the tour title). Quiz me when I’m back!

September

October

November

NBC Philadelphia 10! Show Performance

// August 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, Music, News, Performances

Thanks so much to the wonderful folks over at the 10! Show for having me back. Chris Coyle joined me on upright bass for a new song, “Borrowed or Begged.”

Where’s Gubkin?

// July 14th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Cool Stuff, Music, News, Performances, Travel

I spent most of June traveling around Russia teaching kids English through traditional American folk music as a part of the ESL Folk Project. The first of its kind, this project (fully titled “Ramblin’ Across Russia: Accessing Culture and Language Through American Folk Music”) was designed by Matthew Nelson and Brendan Mulvihill while they were living abroad in Vladivostock and Tomsk (respectively), working as English Teaching Assistants at Russian universities through the Fulbright Organization. All together, the “Ramblers” were Jordan Stern from San Francisco, CA (guitar), Brendan Mulvihill from Philadelphia, PA (mandolin), Matthew Nelson from Nelson, Oklahoma (banjo), and myself.

The goal of the project was not only to assist young Russians in their study of the English language in a fun way, but also to introduce them to sides of American culture that are perhaps not very well represented by Hollywood and other popular mass media. Because the cities we visited were not located in traditionally touristic regions of the country, we were often the first Americans these kids had ever met, and we spent lots of time entertaining questions about life in the United States. Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, our two countries continue to have a complex political relationship, as highlighted by the recent espionage scandal. In light of these events, the opportunity to have positive interactions on a person-to-person basis felt especially satisfying.

I was ridiculously excited when Brendan invited me to join the Ramblers for this adventure, and we traveled countless miles to crisscross Russia and present our program at five summer camps. The following is a post I wrote for the group’s blog about our experience at the Gubkin camp. There are many more stories, pictures, videos, songs, bios, teaching materials, etc available online at www.eslfolk.com. Enjoy!

WHERE’S GUBKIN?

One of the best things about this trip has been getting to see towns in parts of Russia that tourists don’t typically visit. At the camps, people are often curious and ask us about the other cities we’re traveling to on the ESL Folk Tour. Whenever we run down the itinerary, there’s always one place that gets the same response: “Wait, Gubkin? Where’s that?!”

with Elena, our trusty camp leader

I was excited to check out this city that so few people seem to have heard of, and waited with no small amount of anticipation by the door of our train compartment with the Ramblers and our gear. We arrived in the middle of the night and our “train mom” had urged us to be prepared to get off quickly since the train would only be stopping for 2 minutes at the Gubkin station before pressing on. We grabbed our bags and instruments and were bundled off the train, and my harp and I fell directly into the arms of Elena, our camp coordinator.

harp sandwich

Elena and her family helped us lug our stuff over to the hotel where we were booked in four single rooms for the first few nights – an unexpected luxury after so much time spent cramped in platzkart bunks and squashed under my harp in the backseats of taxis. We were each handed a key with an ornate swan chain and ascended some sparkling stone diaz-style steps to the chimes of a thousand fire alarm bells set off by sportsmen surreptitiously smoking in their rooms. After some refreshing showers, we collapsed into our fluffed pillows for a few hours sleep.

David Fay, Sarah, and the Ramblers in front of the biggest hole I've ever seen

In the morning, we took a walk to explore this mysterious city. It turns out that Gubkin is a relatively young city, founded just seventy years ago, and built around an enormous iron mine – a vast, gaping crater seven kilometers wide that we visited with some guides from the camp. The town is beautifully laid out, with charming neighborhood apartment complexes each with their own playground and lots of trees. There was a neat park with a mining display and statues celebrating the town’s history and mining practices.

Matt plays with a handicap

We reviewed some new songs, got our materials ready for the next day’s teaching, and then prepared ourselves for the U.S.A. vs. Slovenia world cup match by playing pick-up soccer in the school fields with some of the campers. It was a “no parents, no rules” game that involved all sorts of inventive goal keeping and ball stealing.

The Ramblers practice the Camp Rainbow dance routine

The next morning, we were treated with a visit from David Fay from the English Language Office of the American Embassy in Moscow and his lovely sister Sarah (We’ve been tossing around the idea of re-naming our group the David Fay Tribute Band). They joined us for a rousing set of morning performances by the Rainbow Summer Camp teams. After being serenaded by the four camp groups, who had rehearsed songs for us, we opened up our introduction to American Folk Music with some songs of our own.

Jordan & Brendan getting their teach on

I thought that performing live song examples as we talked about their background was an nice way to break up the opening lecture, especially since listening to a long block of talk can be super exhausting for students who are learning English as a second language. The kids  seemed to especially enjoy an experimental mash-up of jigs in E minor that Brendan and I tried out when we were discussing immigrants from the British Isles and their influence on American culture and music.

the opening lecture/concert

After our presentation/concert, Matt played some samples of traditional folk music from around the world and the students had to try and guess what country each song came from. Brendan had the chance to visit Tuva with some other Fulbrighters this year and brought back some incredible music from that region. It’s always funny when the Tuvan throat-singing track comes on during this game, because none of the kids ever guess that this music is actually from their own country! I think it’s great to bring up Russia’s cultural diversity in these English camps, because it lets us shift the focus off of all the questions we get about life in America and remind the campers about how cool and interesting and vast their own nation is!

with new friends

One of the most remarkable highlights of this trip for me has been getting to experience Russian hospitality. It seems that every camp we visit adopts us Ramblers, and this was especially true at Gubkin. When we asked Elena for a recommendation of a local restaurant to grab some dinner, she responded by inviting us over to her house for some homemade okroshka, a traditional Russian cold soup made from chopped vegetables and hard-boiled egg with a broth of kvass – a beverage made (as I understand it) by straining water through dark rye bread and allowing it to ferment slightly. This is one of our favorite refreshing drinks, but I’d never had it in a soup before!

our family dinner

After a mere two days in the hotel, we were also invited to stay in Elena’s sister-in-law’s parents’ house, which was a welcome respite for both our budgets and souls. Turns out that after living in such close quarters for so long, those single hotel rooms were starting to feel pretty lonely! We were thrilled to do some laundry and cook a wonderful “family” meal, which we ate beneath the approving (I hope) gaze of an impressive collection of Russian icons.

Ramblers reacting to some local press

On our last night, we were also invited out to a dacha for some sensationally delicious shashlik (Russian bar-b-q)! We enjoyed the evening sun, homemade pickles, samagon, and – in addition to the scrumptious chicken and pork skewers – some of the best grilled carp I’ve ever tasted; a veritable feast! With Masha, Olya, Nastia, and Elena among the guests, the feeling was of a family reunion cook-out. Brendan wrote an experimental shashlik ballad on a makeshift guitar, and we finished off the night with some more crazy, hybrid ball games.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN3l6UW8UMg&hl=en&fs=1]
The morning came too soon, and with it the time for us to leave for Ufa. Our goodbyes were heartfelt and teary, but we took with us many memories – and some sweet camp T-shirts the campers signed!

The next time someone asks me where Gubkin is, I’ll just point to my heart.

-Gillian

Group shot!

ESL Folk Tour in Russia!

// June 14th, 2010 // No Comments » // Cool Stuff, News, Performances, Travel

Hey Everyone,

Sorry I’ve been so terrible about updating this blog – I’ve been on trains for thousands of miles with little internet access this past month. I promise I’ll post more later, but I just wanted to put up a quick note letting you know what I’m up to for the month of June!

I’m currently traveling with a group of musicians to summer camps in Russia, teaching kids English through American folk music! This is our schedule:

June 5th – 8th: Elista
June 9th -14th: Rostov-na-donu
June 16th -19th: Gubkin
June 20th-23rd: Ufa
June 25th-28th: Samara

I stole this expert map from the eslfolk.com site 8)

I’ll have pretty limited web access, but we’re keeping a group blog up on the project’s website: www.eslfolk.com It’s been a really exciting trip so far – can’t wait to share more pics, vids, news with you next time I’ve got wifi

Much love,
Gillian