A.L. Harper

Six months ago I profiled the Texas based band Green River Ordinance (GRO) for BC Magazine's Band of the Week series. At the time of that interview, they had not long-past released their debut full length album The Beauty Of Letting Go, an album which is sincere, and dynamic, sumptuously layered with rich, warm melodies, harmonies, and rhythms.

GRO have the kind of talent that will inspire you to stand back a little, shake your head, and mutter in awe, “Fuck me, they’re fabulous!” Their music contains big stadium sounds like U2, Matchbox Twenty, or Snowpatrol, but with just enough Texas colour to make them stand out from the pack. GRO’s always honest, emotionally warm lyrics, strong drum driven, guitar rich songs sung by frontman Josh Jenkins’ country-boy-singing-rock vocals, all make for fun, inspiring music that is easy to listen and sing along to.

GRO’s newest release, the five track EP Way Back Home is the perfect follow-up – although it may be slightly too short for die hard fans – to their debut album. Way Back Home’s five songs are rich in the country-steeped rock tunes that GRO are so very good at, with strong guitar riffs and hooks, Josh’s easygoing, warm, textured vocals and sincere lyrics — basically more of what makes GRO so fucking fabulous.

Now, how to pick stand-out tracks from a band that puts out mostly superior music? I can only choose my own favourites “Come On” and “Beauty Of Letting Go” – no not a remake from the album but inspired by the title. “Come On” is the kind of apologetic love song that every girl wants sung to her. Loneliness, heartfelt longing and regret are all euphonious expressed in the lyrics: “I just want to be the hand you hold when you’re cryin’/ I just want to be the voice that tells you it will be alright…” You can give “Come On” a listen here. You can also listen to GRO’s fantastically funny country-boy rap edit of “Come On”.

“Beauty of Letting Go” is the mellifluous finish to Way Back Home. GRO adeptly build this song from a point of just bare guitar and strong beats, through to the sonorous ending. But why release a five-song EP so soon after the release of their debut album? I wondered the same thing, so I asked frontman Josh Jenkins to chat with me about it. He very kindly obliged – he's a very nice guy.

Why have you released an EP rather than an entire album?

Over about three months we started recording songs, not with the intention of ever releasing anything, just demo-ing songs to send to people. We ended up with the five songs. We never really intended to put an EP out until we had the songs all done, and we all felt kinda stupid not to put it out. Not to give our fans something to look to.

Now the name of your full length album was The Beauty Of Letting Go, but the song “Beauty of Letting Go” is on this EP. Can you tell me why?

We came up with that name (The Beauty Of Letting Go), like that’s kinda what album, what all the songs had to do with stuff like that (the beauty of letting go) and we came up with the name and we were like “Cool.” After we came up with the name me and Jamey (Ice – guitar) were messing around writing some songs, and we wrote this song and it was like, it only makes sense. It was an idea we got from the album name. We wish we could have put the song on The Beauty Of Letting Go, but it was born after the album was finished.

Tell me about Way Back Home.

With the name and everything; we’d been traveling so much, a lot of the songs on there talk about pursuing music, and what we’re going to do and I guess it's just about where we’re at as a band and this whole music thing, just trying to pursue success as a band. As a band you’re wanting to make it to the next level. So that’s kind of where we found ourselves prior to the record. Just being away from home and the idea of probably moving and stuff, we just decided to name the record Way Back Home.

Are you moving?

We’re not really sure. There is a possibility in the coming months and depending on where we make our next record at, we’ll probably move there for a little while. Which is probably good, cause we have grown up around here. We love home but…

So is this GRO, seriously shopping around for a label?

Yeah we are. We’ve talked to a few and we're just waiting for the right thing to come along.

You can purchase Way Back Home at iTunes and you can listen to GRO’s country flavoured rock on their MySpace space.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 6:04 pm and is filed under Interviews, Music, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.