Artist Interview & Single Premiere: Grant Glad, “On the Ropes”
The Duluth MN transplant talks about his upcoming single, the second off a concept album about the life of a military veteran. You can hear it first here!
Grant Glad’s “On the Ropes” single artwork.
From Tommy to The Red Headed Stranger, single-story concept albums are always fascinating. In today’s sliced-and-diced music listening world, they’re probably growing even more rare.
I’ve seen Grant Glad live, and he’s one of those performers who just comes off as a storyteller, so I’m not surprised he’s made this bold choice for his upcoming record, which he’s releasing a single at a time over the next few months.
I sat down with the recent Duluth transplant on Zoom to talk about the album. The new single, “On the Ropes,” comes out Tuesday August 8, but we’re honored to share an exclusive early listen today!
Carol Roth: You had a band, the Soo Line Loons, until fairly recently, right? Why’d you decide to go solo?
Grant Glad: When COVID hit, it was hard to get everyone together for a little while. We did put out a record in 2021, but ultimately, I decided it’s easier to play by myself. Everyone else got involved in their other projects, too. So we went our separate ways; just kind of a natural progression.
CR: Did that change your songwriting process, going from a band to a solo act?
GG: It definitely did. When we were in the band, I was always the key lyric writer, but I always had those guys to bounce ideas off of. Doing it by myself, I just had to dive in head first and trust my gut. I can send songs to musician friends and get a relatively honest opinion, but everyone is gonna be pretty nice, you know? We're Minnesotans; nobody can say mean things about anything. So you gotta up your inner critic a little bit.
CR: These new singles are very story-focused, and about telling other people's stories. Have you always been drawn to writing story songs like that or has that changed recently?
GG: I've always been drawn to it but I didn't feel good at it until recently. The most well-known Soo Line Loons song is “Dancing at the VFW,” and that’s a story song. I wrote it about my grandparents; they went dancing at the VFW every Friday night. But it's a slow 4.5-minute song. It’s great on a record, but when you're in a band, that kind of song’s not gonna work in a bar where people just want to enjoy themselves and have a good time. There's a time and a place for every type of music. So the Loons gravitated more towards good-time songs.
CR: What inspired you to tell an album length story for this new project?
GG: I had “Dancing at the VFW” and part of me wanted to dive deeper into those characters. I had that idea kicking around the back of my head, but I had no idea what to do with it. And then I wrote the song that starts the album, “Gunpowder at Dawn.” That's when I was like, that could be the same character as “Dancing at the VFW.” I had my bookends, I just had to fill it in.
The other songs almost came sequentially and it was like my own little prompts where I’d go “okay, I need a song about a domesticated life.” I called in Sarah Morris for that song because I thought there's gotta be a song about domesticity and it can't be cheesy. So me and Sarah wrote “Getting On Fine.” It’s just about a New Year's Eve at home and then taking the kids to hockey practice. That was kind of the box that I was working on with because I didn't want to go for the wedding day or the birth of the first child, the big obvious things.
CR: That's really interesting that you didn't want to go for those tent pole moments in somebody's life.
GG: Yeah, because I think what happens ultimately is we overhype these things and they end up not being the things you remember anyway. Think about high school: everyone overhypes prom night. But you remember all those nights you hung out with your friends down by the river more than you remember prom. It's the little things that add up and create a life.
Grant Glad. Photo courtesy of the artist.
CR: So this album is sort of the life story of a veteran. Is that correct?
GG: It is. The VFW song prompted it because the first line is “I gave four years to the Army.” That's how I ended up writing the song “At Ease,” which is the first single of this project that I released. I didn’t know shit about the military other than what the movies have told me.
There's like these two types of songs that are about the military. There's like rah-rah Toby Keith “we love America” songs, and on the other side you have “Masters of War” by Bob Dylan. I think the story can be a little bit more nuanced than that. Working class people often join the military because they need to do something and it gets them out of their small town. It's less politically motivated or about morality and ethics. I found that story to be a little bit more interesting.
And it's not always heroic or tragic; I talked to my buddies who were in the military; they helped me write “At Ease.” I asked them to tell me about it, and they're like, it was boring as hell. I went to Kuwait. I sat in a guard tower and then I went home; that was it.
CR: I love hearing about the recording process for albums; what can you tell me about this one?
GG: It was still kind of the COVID era when I started recording it, so it had to be recorded remotely. I asked friends to recommend an upright bass player and everybody was like, call Liz Draper. So I’d go into the studio, record my parts and send it to Liz. She’d record the bass part, send it back and I’d mix it in. I never had to correct her on a note. And then I was like, well, that worked so well with Liz, why don't I go for other big names? So Ryan Young of Trampled by Turtles did the fiddle on “Gunpowder at Dawn.” Jillian Rae did the fiddle on everything else.
It was incredible. Like if I don't have to drag people to a studio, they're willing to record on them. I had my friend Matthew Fox play lead guitar for “At Ease” and my friend Julian Edoff played harmonica for “On the Ropes.” It was very much a brick by brick thing, which was cool because I could kind of see this thing build in front of me, and I didn't tell anybody how to play anything. They all did amazing.
CR: Let’s talk about “On the Ropes,” which we’re premiering here. I found the first few moments a bit scary, like is this gonna turn out really bad?
GG: I can see that, because it's like that moment in a life where this guy is, like, what am I even doing? He's in the checkout line and he’s like, my boss is doing fine and I'm worried if my card's gonna get declined. This can’t be right. Somebody must be responsible for this, and they should be punished. It's like those dark thoughts everyone has when you're on the ropes. I wanted to try and capture that darkness. Ultimately, he just resigns himself, like I'll just go home, have a couple of beers, wake up in the morning and go back to work.
CR: I'm always interested in those touch points where somebody chooses a different path. In the best stories, like this one, you don’t know which way it’s gonna go.
GG: It could go a lot of ways. This is a frustrated, poor person with not many options. In the next verse he thinks wow, there's people out there that are cutting catalytic converters out of cars and they're making more money than I am. Why don't I just go do that? And again, it's just that simple thought and it's like he's never gonna do it. He's gonna go home and have a beer and go to work. But he has that moment.
CR: I get that. Sometimes I think about how society hasn't really fulfilled its end of the bargain; like, some people get nothing in return for following the rules. So it can be a little frustrating to be like, why am I following these rules again? What's the point of this social contract I’ve agreed to?
GG: That's exactly it. And the things we do to help rarely seem to help; it's like no one ever addresses the root cause of things. I don't like getting outright political in a song because I think all you end up doing is preaching to the choir. But with a good story song, maybe somebody sees something in a slightly different light and gives it a little bit of consideration or has a little more empathy than they did before.
CR: So what are your upcoming plans in terms of shows or new songs?
GG: I just moved up to Duluth and I'm just kind of playing around town here and figuring that out. The next single coming out after “On the Ropes” is called “The Night Before Thanksgiving.” It’s about living in your hometown, where everyone comes back for holidays, and you have that unplanned high school reunion. It's about running into those people when you're still there and having to deal with those emotions. The album gets into the love story after that, so that's where it turns around and we don't have to worry about this guy anymore. He’s gonna be okay.
“On the Ropes” comes out August 8. Listen to it now!
“On the Ropes” song credits
Grant Glad - acoustic guitar/vocals
Liz Draper - upright bass
Julian Edoff - harmonica
Mixed and mastered by Tony Williamette at Minnehaha Recording Company
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the primary music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym T.A. Berkeley!
