Biography

Greg Grant started playing music when his mother made him take violin lessons when he was 8, that didn't last long, however, and Zoot from the Muppet Show inspired him to start playing the saxophone at the age of 9, and he's been playing ever since. Born in New York City, raised in New York State, he grew up near one of the most diverse melting pot cities on the planet. He studied classical and jazz at Oberlin college/conservatory for a bit, but realized that he wanted to experience life and music outside the walls of an ivory tower. He admires and is inspired by many different styles of music from all over the world ranging from jazz to rock, folk to techno, classical to electronic, ambient, textural, flamenco and Arabic. This love of diversity caused him to travel around quite a bit, he has lived in Barcelona, Spain for 3 years but has been more or less nomadic, traveling around Europe, Canada, Central America, and the U.S.A. Now based in northwestern Montana, Greg has founded Strawbale Studios, but he is always traveling around, finding new influences and inspiration for his music.

After being mainly a saxophonist for many years, he has added guitar, voice, and drums to his musical palette. He came to the realization that his favorite musicians were the ones who could write well crafted songs, that serve as a springboard into improvised jamming. He has added his musical style to various bands, including jazz orchestras, world music groups, blues bands, rock bands, funk rock bands, and experimental groups. He has done countless solo performances as well at nightclubs, cultural centers, universities, festivals, concert halls at parks and on the street all over north America and Europe. Greg is a sonic adventurer who likes to explore unknown territory. The music that attracts him dives into deep places that pulls, both him and his listeners along. Some major influences on him are: King Crimson, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel, Pink Floyd, Cat Stevens, Greg Brown, John Fogerty, John Coltrane, Tracy Chapman, Joni Mitchell, Ani Difranco, Ali Farka Toure, The Beatles, Brian Eno, Wim Mertens, Steven Reich, Laurie Anderson, Keith Jarrett and Dead Can Dance.

When asked about himself, Greg replied, " I love developing my skills as a songwriter and musician, but it is only to serve the music. I'm not interested in huge amounts of technique that show off my abilities and stroke my ego. Technique is necessary, but only to the point that it allows the music to come through fluidly and powerfully. I think that if you approach music with this attitude then you end up doing things that you never would've been able to imagine. The music uses you and plays through you and what comes out of you is a surprise, even to yourself! I 'm not interested in playing something over and over again, even if it's at a high level of playing. I'm interested in using songs I am comfortable with in order to get to that place where I can go away from the song to an unknown, magical place that even I don't know about, and then come back to the song. I love musicians that have that proper balance of structure and freedom. Too much structure leaves me bored and stifled, and too much freedom leaves me wanting something more solid and well crafted... It's a difficult thing to achieve, but it's what I strive for."

Tour Dates

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Journal: Past Shows

9/20/08. Molly Brown's, Trego, MT
Definitely the summer's last warm night to be playing out on the deck back at MB's. It was a great night, a good crowd and it felt great to be playing music tonight after all the construction I have been doing this summer - I can't wait to tour again. We got everything in the car right before it rained, perfect timing.

8/23/08. Park Place Noon Concert, Sandpoint, ID
We didn't get a whole lot of sleep, but just enough to be happy about a noon gig. A bit of Italian food for breakfast and I pulled onto the sidewalk to unload and fortunately back onto the street right before a cop car came by - man there are a lot of cops in this town. A mellow sidewalk show under a canopy and people hanging on benches or at tables. One homeless looking guy was jamming out while lying on a bench. After I stopped he said to me, "that was a nice daydream." I guess it was.

8/22/08. Eickhardt's, Sandpoint, ID
We set up our tent just outside town at a campground right next to a gas station and a driving range. It was nice to do that in the light instead of at 2 in the morning after the gig. This is definitely one of my favorite places to play. It was a good crowd tonight and a good feeling in the room. I had a great time and was happy that my fingers and voice were fine despite not playing for ahwile as I have been in summer construction mode for the past few months.

After the gig we walked around Sandpoint for awhile, seeing police everywhere, in cars and trucks and jeeps and on foot and on bicycle. Linda took some great late night pictures.

7/25-27/08. Arts in the Park, Kalispell, MT
Perfect weather this year, no smoke, no fires, no rain, no super hot heat. Doing sound was fun and I played all three days with my stripped down rig. Smooth.

7/5/08. Molly Brown's Trego, MT
It's been a year since I played here, I think. It was great to be back here, the most urban place around, playing music to a great crowd. Welcome back Barry and Susan. I love this place!

6/20/08. Portneuf Brewing Co, Pocatello, ID
We spent most of the morning in our motel room, a nice little vacation. It's nice to not have to drive and just hang and cook up some food in the room and watch tv. We finally saw the rest of The Karate Kid - it's been on a lot whenever we are at motels and we usually only catch a bit of it before having to leave for the gig or sleep or push on driving (it seems like it's on all the time). The show tonight was at a local brewery that had really good beer. I enjoyed playing there and it was nice to talk shop with some of the musicians from the night before.

6/19/08. First National Bar, Pocatello, ID
We like this town quite a bit. It is a college town and pretty small, surrounded by mountains, but with enough here to keep it interesting. We weren't really ready to hit the road again, it woulda been nice to be home but once you've driven 8 hours you forget about home and you are where you are. Traveling definitely compresses time, I believe. Yesterday feels like a week ago, you just see and experience so much, I guess. I did a stripped down set at this very western looking bar, nice place. I was the featured artist and afterward there was open mic. Kinda fun to be a stranger at an open mic in a new town. Some good players here. Most people played old cover songs so I was definitely the only one playing originals and with a looper. The bartender told me, "I've never seen anything like that here before, you rocked".

6/15/08. Wedding at Wapato Point Winery, Lake Chelan, WA
So we puttered along yesterday, taking our time and taking in Guitar Center and great Korean food for lunch. We had a little hippie fest on a patch of grass under a tree in the mall parking lot. Eric and I changed our strings with Vinnie sprawled out on the grass and it was great watching people driving by staring at us like we were from the 60's or something. We hit a Mexican grocery store in Bridgeport that was great and a taco truck and found a campground that was super nice on the Columbia River, but super full, so we pressed on to Alta Lake. It was also full of hundreds of people camping, but there was enough space in this little city of tents and rvs for us. It is strange to "camp" amongst so many people and showers etc, but it was fun. We had a great conversation on politics and the world and how it could be better than it is. I think we came close to solving the world's problems, but I'm not sure if we have the resources to put our new system into place. Maybe if we can sell a few more cd's... We had to wake up at 7 am,way too early, thanks to the sun and people up and about and a big dog with a low bark that I believe enjoyed barking just to hear it echo all the way down to the lake.

The wedding went great. It got hot there under the desert sun, but we sweated and survived and people sweated and danced and we jumped in the lake (cold) afterwards. Congratulations Hillary and Rob!

6/13/08. Eichardt's, Sandpoint, ID
This was the first gig with a band for quite some time. We rehearsed two times and here we are playing at Eichardt's on a friday night. Vinnie on the drums and Eric on the 8 string bass/guitar and me doing my thing. I got to use my looper as well and it worked out pretty well, most of the time, anyway. It's great to have other musicians to play with up on stage with me. I hope I can do more touring with a band this year. We camped out tonight, that was a nice change from the motel routine as well.

6/2/08. Whitefish Farmer's Market, Whitefish, MT
A beautiful afternoon, no rain, no wind. It's been raining here almost every day so I was very grateful for the sunshine. It's a great scene here, it was nice to be a part of it again, thank you Jay.

5/31/08. Bert and Ernie's, Great Falls, MT
My first time here, really nice place to play. They have music 6 nights a week and I am totally into that. Great people working here, not exactly a full house tonight, but a few people made it a worthwhile evening anyway. I'll have to come back when it gets colder.

5/30/08. Norris Hot Springs, Norris, MT
Linda soaked for like 5 hours while I played tonight. I got to soak as well, before. Ahhh the best pre gig thing you can do, I believe. A cold beer in a hot pool ,with a belly full of bison burger. I was happy to be playing here, but it was hard to have to get out of the pool. I was the boy in the plastic bubble tonight as rain was threatening. I love this place.

5/10/08. Java Joe's Coffeehouse, Des Moines, IA
Despite some weird power surges/ electric voodoo with the house pa this was a fun place to play. What a great idea to serve beer in a coffeehouse, that doesn't happen in most places but it does here.

5/9/08. DG's Taphouse, Ames, IA
Good to be back in Ames, a great college town. It was graduation so there wasn't the crowd here tonight like last time. I had fun though. Hopefully I'll be back here in the Fall.

5/8/08. Blacksheep Coffeehouse, Sioux Falls, SD
The Boys of the Queen Bee Mill opened the show tonight - really good bluegrass. I had a good time playing for a mostly college - aged crowd tonight. Played through the vintage sound system of the Boys of the Queen Bee Mill. We had a blast crashing at the Night Owl Cafe, which was really the living room of one of the guys in the band. Linda and I loved sitting on the couch with maybe 20 people crammed into the room. People kept coming and going, with beers in hand, on their way to wherever, just stopping by for a bit. Great conversations about biodiesel vehicles and one guy who apparently was some kind of mad genius and attached a jet engine, powered by biodiesel, to a Hummer filled with batteries in the back. He runs the engine for a few minutes and it quick charges the batteries which can then power the Hummer for around 400 miles between charges. It was nice to see people thinking and prepared to make their own cheap transportation rather than just paying what big oil is asking. Yeah, fight the power!

5/3/08. Riley's Irish Pub, Helena, MT
Less than 2 hours driving between shows, I love it. This was a great place. Competition from another show in town tonight so not the crowd I was hoping for, but I'd love to play here again, hopefully to a full house. A great conversation about the present and the future and technology with the bartender after the show.

5/2/08. Machinery Row/The Beaks, Great Falls, MT
A nice drive to Great Falls. We are always excited about staying in our favorite motel in the US - the Ohaire Motor Inn. I think I wrote about it before. It is a great place, from another time when everything was clean and safe and easy and reasonable. Plus it has the Sip and Dip, the swimming pool visible at the bar where they filmed Splash. We still haven't gotten to see the mermaid who is there on friday and saturday nights. We noticed a sign looking for mermaid applicants. The gig at The Breaks was very mellow, nice place.

1/25/2008. The Front Porch, Eureka, MT
After our tour to New York and back it is great to be back in Montana - it always is. This is a brand new coffeehouse/performance space/restaurant in thriving downtown Eureka. We've been hearing about the possibility of this place for over a year, now, and it was nice to walk into the finished product. A super nice place, a great room - it sounded great in there. It's always fun to play for friends and familiar faces and some new ones as well. It was great to rock out for the first two sets and then by the third set, a change of pace and vibe as the evening became quite intimate. I look forward to the next time.

1/12/08. DG's Tap House, Ames, Iowa
This was a great place. A college town in Iowa - as we were driving into town one of the first things we saw was a group of Japanese students and that made us happy. We ended up staying at a motel right next to a Mexican restaurant, something that is becoming a habit. At the bar we had to load in (and out) up a long flight of narrow stairs, a very dangerous affair at two in the morning if you've been drinking... The bar was large with a BIG stage - I love big stages. It was loud in there, there must have been three hundred people in there or so, having a good time. I love it when people dance when I'm playing, as a solo musician it doesn't always happen and when it does I love it. I'll be back here sometime pretty soon, I hope. Driving back home in MT after this we felt like we were on top of Mt. Everest - 60 mph winds or so blowing snow drifts into the highway. It was hard to even see the road, we almost drove off it a few times. A huge trailer behind a pickup truck had caught a gust of wind and actually flipped onto it's side. We were stopped on the highway for 20 minutes watching them try and pull it back down. They had to park a big snowplow truck in front of it to block the wind first, crazy...

1/4/08. GW Tavern, Washington Depot, CT
The first journal entry of 2008. It is an interesting time to be alive and to be traveling around playing music. The future is now - we keep hearing about rfid chips on the radio and in print. No thank you, no - I'm not interested in having a chip installed into my arm, or injected via hypodermic needle. I can only see the downside of it. Tonight at the GW was not quite as lively as the other night, but still a lot of fun. Some old friends from my high school days came out tonight - thanks for making the drive!

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