I just had a suspicion of the US, but the audience is absolutely fantastic
Though Grunwald has made the occasional foray over to Europe and the UK, and has played Canada often, he’d never really considered making any kind of concerted effort to break into the US. His “conversion” and recent successes there were down to being invited by long-time buddy Xavier Rudd to open for him on his latest 28-date American tour.
“It was really cool, a great hook-up – I was really, really touched and humbled at the response. Ironically enough, being somebody who is left-leaning, I just had a suspicion of the US, but the audience is absolutely fantastic and the places that we went were amazing, and [there were] very forward-thinking people in most of those places. I guess we were playing Xavier’s audience but you’ve got that thing in America that there are just so many people there that there are a hell of a lot of left-leaning progressive people, good people, not just rednecks. We played in Austin, Texas, and Nashville, Brooklyn, LA, Atlanta, Georgia, Seattle… You know, we sort of went all over the place. Colorado was fantastic; we played in Denver and Boulder. I saw machine guns in a pawnbroker’s in Kentucky and freaked out – big machine guns, Uzis, handguns, little pink ones for the ladies – radical! Canada has been building really nicely – I did a couple of really nice festivals and I just really love the people over here. There are people over here living self-sufficiently, just living the dream life. The beauty can’t be described of these places and then you go play a festival for these beautiful, just really genuine alternative people.”
It looks like Grunwald will be recording his next album in the US, and it’ll see a return to his earlier, pre-experimental records, so, having been to the “source”, he’s taking his own music back to where he started.
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