So ... what's happening?

Being in a band can at times be the most soul destroying and frustrating occupations!

You pour you heart and soul into something, spend countless hours, writing, rehearsing, refining, recording and chasing gigs under the certain knowledge that no one else really gives a toss one way or the other!

Grinn, has always been a good band - not just in terms of musicianship, which is more than competent - but in terms if the camaraderie, mutual support and commitment. But somewhere around mind 2005 things started to become a bit of a chore.

We had countless gigs with support acts who were literally so bad that they drove people out of the venue, leaving us regularly playing to a the same bunch of friends and die hards (thank you all for continued support) and a handful of barflies, usually for less than petrol money.

As a band we didn’t really seem to be progressing anywhere.

We had as a band lost direction to a certain extent and although we were writing new material, some of which was pretty good, some not so good, we had lost a bit of drive.

I especially was going through a dry spell as far as writing was concerned.

So we decided to rest the band for a while, try some other things and then get back to it and see what happened. We reformed in January and had some practices and a couple of Gigs but it still seemed like too much effort for too little reward. So Paddy and I had a talk about what we should do. We were both of the opinion that we could probably focus our efforts better elsewhere, but we didn’t want to kill Grinn – like I said, it’s a good band.

Paddy suggested that he take a year or so out of Grinn to concentrate on other things and I was thus thinking of following suit and suggesting to Lee and Nev that we keep Grinn in hibernation for another year.

But after a couple months of not really doing anything decisive one way of the other I asked Lee and Nev what they though of trying things as a three piece for a while; write some new material, and have more fun gigging by going for quick hit opener and support slots. Slipping down the bill make life easier – usually it means less gear to lug about for a start.

Nev and Lee were both up for it and so I started trying to figure out how to rearrange the material for a three piece – Grinn has after all been build around the core of duel vocals and 2 guitar parts.

But one day I woke up with an idea for a tune and after working on it for a while, came up with another and another. In short, after failing to write anything suitable for Grinn I’d put five songs together in less that a week.

So, the first official Grinn three piece rehearsal is scheduled for tonight and we’ll see where we go from there – but something has defiantly switched inside for me and I’m positive about Grinn again and really looking forward to getting back to it. And whenever Paddy gets the bug again, he'll be welcome back onboard.

You know what we do – get in touch if you want a support act who’ll actually get the party started!