Wow, Don. Sorry the album bummed you out so bad. We made that one back in
Feb. 1993. Warner Brothers decided it was a bit too wiggy for them to put
out back then. As far as the vocals go, I'm about as much a lead singer as
Junior Samples. I had other GrooveGrass Boyz singing all the lead stuff, but
the A&R deptartment about lost their dang minds when I turned the record in
and I wasn't singing anything.
I explained I had no business singing the main parts but they whipped the old
contract out and showed me the part where it said that I had to. That's why
the CD "The GrooveGrass Boyz" has everybody else singing and not me. When
they decided not to put out "GrooveGrass 101" which was at the time titled "A
Sample of Another Kind of Blues" I thought that thing would never see the
light of day. So I didn't really worry too much that I sang most everything.
Well one thing lead to another, me and WB flipped each other off and went our
seperate ways. I decided to start a record company for the sole purpose of
making "The GrooveGrass Boyz" album and then just sell it on the internet.
Jim Ed Norman, the president of WB was cool enough to let me use "Salty Dawg"
on that record. The next thing you know we put out a couple of singles by
"The GrooveGrass Boyz" and sold them at a pretty good clip. "Rocky Top" hit
pretty hard and actually has now re-charted in BillBoard again and is selling
out the you know what in Europe. Over a 1/2 million units sold isn't too
shabby for a bunch of rednecks with an indie label and a banjo. Then we did
"Mac Doc and Del" and Barry and them over at SugarHill distributed that for us
and it's doing pretty good too, it's not GrooveGrass though. The next thing
you know the fine folks at WB catch wind of how many units we're selling every
week from USA Today and BillBoard a bunch of other magazines and media things
that are talking about us these days and decide it's time to put out "A Sample
of Another Kind of Blues". Well I about lost MY mind because by this time the
record is 6 years old. I don't make records that sound like that anymore. I
think they're sonically and vocally much better and more commercially viable
as to what is happening in the market place now in 1999. You can see that in
the sales we have every time we do a GrooveGrass re-mix for a pop group or
artist and we have yet to have sales less than 1/2 million for any one of
those. I told the WB folks I'd like to change the name of the album to
"GrooveGrass 101" and put a thing on the inside that says "This album was
recorded in 1993." Again Jim Ed was cool enough to let me. So even though
it's the 2nd GrooveGrass album that's available, it's actually the 1st one.
Personally, I like that record. I've never heard anything like it before.
And as far as the 70's rock thing you talked about, I'm way into KISS, AC/DC
and Van Halen. But you're probably right about that too, they'd never have
me. I'm not familiar with your record or the one your friend Greg Garing did.
I'll bet they are both really good and very innovative with a lot of great
singing. But, if you'd like to sell about a million of them, email me and
maybe we'll do a re-mix for you.
"Give Jeff Wall a Carter Family CD",
Scott Rouse
GrooveGrass Recordings
PS
The part where you said "Despite the big names helping him out, Rouse just
doesn't seem to have what it takes to pull it off.--don" I think we already
did pull whatever "it" is off.
Jeff Wall
http://www.twangzine.com The Webs least sucky music magazine
3421 Daisy Crescent - Va Beach, Va - 23456
