Grady's first record Y.U. So Shady? kind of showed up without much of a plan; we’d already been playing some gigs and wanted some more around Austin. We figured we’d get more gigs if we had a CD together, so, we went into the studio for a day or two and banged it out, sent it around to some clubs and sold it off the stage.

It started to get a lot of play on the radio in Austin. Then people started asking for it in the stores and a label was interested in putting it out. We scrambled to put a proper cover on the album and put it together as fast as we could. In different circumstances, we may have waited longer and written more songs, but the debut album really wasn’t intended to be a stand up record. We just needed a demo. (laughs) It’s a cool record and represents the start of our band.

We obviously put a lot more planning into our second record, A Cup of Cold Poison [4], which was released June 19. The songs had already been played live quite a bit. We actually spent less time on it because we only had to throw it down once…we went into the studio, recorded it, mixed it and it was done. By the second album, the sound of the band had developed – we got stronger, louder and faster.

Y.U. So Shady? [5] was a transitional record, but it wasn’t because we were thinking backwards, in terms of what the Big Sugar fan base may have been looking for. I’d had Big Sugar [6], and that was done. In Austin, not many people knew about Big Sugar. It wasn’t like there were Big Sugar fans standing there expecting to hear Turn The Lights On, On The Scene and stuff like that. We were able to go out there and be judged on our own merit. It’s better when people don’t have some preconceived notion of what a record should sound like.

I didn't feel like I suddenly had the luxury of anonymity. It was more a luxury to be a decorated war hero. To go from depending on a brand name and a repertoire, to all of a sudden come out as something new puts a lot of pressure on. It takes away a lot of privileges, but also tests your metal.

If you take the creature comforts of rock and roll away, what you’re left with is a hot sweaty night, a hot sweaty shirt and you’re changing in the back alley as you’re loading your own vehicle. I wasn’t afraid of that. I thought, ‘If that’s all that’s standing between me and rock and roll, it doesn’t seem like that big of an obstacle.’

*****

In the beginning, the first places I played in were Italian wedding halls. Of course, we played polkas, waltzes, all kinds of traditional Italian music and disco. That didn’t matter to me one bit; I was just so happy to be able to go out with older guys and get paid. I was getting more money than anyone else my age, and all I had to do was stay out until 3 a.m. on a Saturday night. I was quite pleased with myself.

When I was playing in garage bands as a kid, we wouldn’t get paid, but we’d go to our old grade school and talk to the principal about putting on concerts, and they’d let us use the gymnasium. We’d get a projector and lights, rent a bunch of gear and they’d bring all the kids from the school into the gym at 10:30 a.m. for our show. We were scared out of our pants, but we’d put on our 30-minute long rock show for these kids. Those gigs usually ended up costing us money.

I grew up in a blue collar factory town south of Windsor, Ontario. It was a good place to come of age because otherwise I don’t think I would have had the musical experiences that I did. With the border right there, there was a lot of American influence.

Eventually I moved my way west. We still have a farm in Alberta. When all hands on deck are needed, I get back in there. The Big Sugar song All Hell For A Basement, where I sang about a heaven in Alberta, is not actually about Albertans; it’s about the first wave of Newfoundlanders coming to Alberta to work up north and what they must have gone through. I have a place in my heart for Newfoundlanders. They’re practically coming from a foreign country; they stand out because of their culture, customs, the way they speak, et cetera.

The first time I met Newfoundlanders was up in Fort McMurray. When Big Sugar played there, it didn’t even have an airport, it was just this tiny little place. It struck me as a quintessential Canadian story – in this expansive country, we find ourselves born and raised in one place and we find a job or go to university 2,000 miles away. You grow up in Alberta, cross a major mountain range and you end up on the coast in Vancouver. Canadians don’t really stop and think about that too much. So, the song was about finding hope and starting over again in a new place.

For me, moving down to Texas was pretty natural because I grew up near the U.S. border where you don’t really adapt to things like kilometers or Celsius. Probably until I was 30 years old, everything was 100 miles per hour, 78 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny. Moving down south, suddenly everything was familiar again. It was like, “Oh, right, I remember this from growing up.” There are also a lot of similarities, culturally and physically, between Texas and Alberta, so I was prepared. What have we got here? High tech industries, oil and natural gas, cattle...

The change was good because I was jaded about the Canadian music industry. At the same time, I’m also very proud of the Canadian music industry. It goes in cycles. At points, the Canadian music industry champions Canadian talent, and there was a decade where if you turned on the TV or radio, most of what you saw and heard was Canadian. Big Sugar played at all the colleges and universities and toured across Canada. Then it sort of changed and the music labels became more interested in American music.

It’s always been validating to have success in America. If you have success in America, they’ll name a street after you; if you have success in Canada, you better have it for 40 years, because they’re not going to start naming stuff after you until it’s been proven that they can’t kill you off. I just saw it dwindle down to, nothing matters if you don’t have American success. It shouldn’t be the only thing that validates you.

I'm a proud Canadian and Big Sugar took a lot of heat for it. Some people don’t sing the national anthem at the hockey games; they’re embarrassed. Some people don’t even take their hat off. It’s disgusting.

In fact, the national anthem was sort of the straw that broke the camel’s back. We’d been in some big dispute over our record label and our manager was on the wrong side of the argument…I can’t even remember what it was about, which is probably for the better. Anyway, we went on this TV show and thought, ‘No, we’re not going to play our single; we’re going to play the national anthem.’ The TV show made fun of us for doing it, the record label stopped talking to us, the manager was pissed off, everybody was pissed off, and yet, people would request it at every show and eventually we couldn’t do a gig without doing it. When our fans went berserk over it, we knew we were doing the right thing.

While fans held it up as this great thing, the industry didn’t. The label didn’t want to put it on our record in case we would offend people in Quebec. Excuse me, but since when do we make rock and roll to not offend anybody, and who says Quebec doesn’t have proud Canadians? I didn’t think it would start such a sh*t storm, and I was really repulsed by the entire experience.

It’s not that I find the American music industry more refreshing; The American scene has its own pitfalls, but the Austin, Texas scene in particular is a completely different beast. Texas in general is so proud of its own, and it’s not based on commercial success. They just like you if you’re good, if you’re local, if you play every week and are “one of us.” They give the local artist the best table at the restaurant. Austin music comes first in Austin, and that’s a really healthy seed when you want to create music, start some new concept and work it out in front of an audience. They don’t turn their back on you if you have success.

There are certain media outlets in Canada, and Toronto specifically, where because you’re Canadian, they just kick the crap out of you. If that’s someone’s idea of hip journalism, I just don’t agree with it. They’ll put you on the cover of the magazine when you’re still a runt making your way. Once you start having platinum records, they start throwing rocks and stones. Some of the stuff they printed was just out and out slander. There were so many things said about what Big Sugar supposedly was that I just had to turn my back on it.

I’m not ashamed of one minute of Big Sugar; I have no regrets. I’m proud of it and when people tell me how much they loved it and ask me if it will ever come back, I don’t take offense to that. I wasn’t running away from my previous body of work. I just wanted to continue creating inspired work, so I had to have a chance to sweat it out a bit and engage in something else that required a lot of effort and focus. Hopefully that same recipe will continue to please our fans or get us some new fans.

The collaboration with Big Ben Richardson and Chris Leyton has been great. We were more all of the same mind than I had been with Big Sugar. Big Sugar was a product of the environment – we were based in Toronto and I grew up across from the border from Detroit. I saw 1970s arena rock at its finest. I’d played in rockabilly bands and country honkey tonks, so when Big Sugar came out, we combined all those things. It’s the same thing with Grady except we’re based in Austin, so we’re a product of the Austin environment.

Here, you have a lot of roots music, Americana, honkey tonk, traditional blues, country and things like that, but you also have an underground metal scene that’s really vibrant and kind of unbelievable. I don’t think it’s important to categorize it, but somebody’s got to explain music in print, and that’s tough. I wouldn’t want to be a music journalist!

Reggae doesn’t come into Grady’s music, but I still listen to it. I took a break from it for a couple years and didn’t really listen to it at all. But then I started to work on reggae again quite a bit on dub mixes for other artists. Before a Big Sugar gig, the band would be on the bus listening to reggae and after the show, we’d be on the bus listening to reggae. It was a non-stop soundtrack, all the time. It’s not where we are now.

I have some favorite new artists and there are a lot of Austin bands we’re fans of. It is like a small town and everyone supports each other. It’s a really contagious feeling and easy to get caught up in it. Our favorite band right now is called The Sword [7], a local metal band that’s done quite well nationally. I’ve also been doing a lot of producing. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Government Mule, Taj Mahal, The Meters, Willie Nelson, Joel Plaskett Emergency...it feels really good to support other artists.

Some degree of fame has been a side effect of this job I do, but I didn’t get into it to be famous. If you get famous for doing something that you do well, then it’s a point of pride and I’m content with that. I’d hate to be famous for the sake of being famous like so many of these so-called tabloid celebrities. They’re famous for getting drunk and arrested, for bad behavior or being in a movie that nobody sees. That, to me, is not interesting. I’d rather invent something with my name on it.

We recently worked with Willie Nelson a little bit, and we really idolize him, as a lot of people do. As an artist, he’s created his own heaven, and it’s a place all artists aspire to. He goes about his business on his own terms, at his own speed. He’s never taken any guff from anybody, and he’s been congratulated for it large. He’s like the patron saint of musicians. For someone who’s been so influential, he’s very unassuming and so generous with his time. He takes the role of mentor quite easily.

He’s like, “Oh, you guys are shooting a video? Here, use my ranch,” or “You’re making a record? Use my studio,” or “You want me to tell a joke on your record? Sure, I’ll do that.” You don’t have to ask him twice. If that’s what Willie Nelson is like, you got no reason to act important.

*****

I’ve said I’m not the same man I used to be. Change is inevitable, so you may as well go with it. Just undergoing the process of walking away from a really successful band and an established brand name and be willing to start from scratch was a cathartic process, and it was hard. It was really hard.

It’s like this romantic notion to just go back to being a punk rocker, loading your own gear, tuning your one guitar and being on a five-band bill in some little dive…the reality is tough. When you’re used to having a tour bus, a tour manager, a personal assistant and a guitar check, it’s pretty humbling. Maybe I needed some humbling. I needed to go out and prove that I wasn’t just getting a little drunk on success and getting a little disconnected from reality. I think we proved our point and I feel stronger and more confident.

You know, you gotta keep traveling to keep yourself in check. Down here in Texas I'm rolling in my new ’66 Dodge Charger. I also have my ’70 Dodge Charger up at the farm in Alberta. I've sung about wondering if I'll ever get back home. This feels like home, the farm feels like home. One thing that a lot of travel and rambling has instilled in me is, appreciate it, wherever that place may be.

I keep a keen sense of where that place is, even when I’m in Oslo, Norway or anywhere else on the globe. It’s like having a navigational point for how you conduct yourself. Of course, my mother doesn’t call me ‘Grady,’ she calls me ‘Gordie,’ so that helps me keep it honest. If I’m out at night, the later it gets, then I start to transform into Grady. But you can call me Gordie.

*****

If you enjoyed this story, you may also enjoy: Mr. Chill On The Off Ramp [8]