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Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio
By Ken Shimamoto
After a brief recording hiatus, Little Grizzly is back on the Metroplex boards with its “loud American folk music.”
Frontguy George Lane is living proof of just how narrow the gap between folk croakage and full-on rock thunder is. Like the guys from Kiss, he started out singing in a pizza parlor. With the help of heavy Denton friends Centro-matic and Slobberbone, he was transmogrified into a quirky alt-country rocker worthy of comparisons with Uncle Tupelo, the Bottle Rockets (part of his debut full-length, Please Let Me Go, It Wasn’t Meant To Be, was recorded at Jay Farrar’s studio), and mighty Sooners the Flaming Lips. Between 1997’s cassette-only Watered Down (due for re-release on c.d. any minute now) and Lane’s second full-length, I’d Be Lying If I Said I Wasn’t Scared, from 2001, he grew a full band, replete with Echo Lab studios mainman/Quality Park Records honcho Matthew Barnhart on guitar. The band has toured extensively throughout the region and the Midwest.
Lane sings in an appealing warble, with a careless approach to intonation reminiscent of Paul Westerberg back when he used to drink a lot or Springsteen when he had something to prove (see: Nebraska). With the band raging and storming behind him, he sounds at times like the head Lip, Wayne Coyne, fronting the Who circa “A Quick One” — a good thing, I’m thinking. He’s that rarity, a rocker who writes songs that actually scan as poetry. For my two cents, “Keeping Her Head About It” is a better abuse song — less sentimental — than either “Luka” or “Better Man.” What with Little Grizzly heading back into the studio soon, he should have some new material, too.
Sat at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studio, 411 E Sycamore, Denton. 940-387-7781.
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