THREE’S A PARTY
Forget about conservative politicos. San Diego band Grand Ole Party delivers slinky sleaze-rock to blue and red states alike.
By Cristina Black / Photo By Pamela Littky
Kristin Gundred is almost too nice on the phone. “I’m sorry it’s just me,” she says, calling from her apartment in the hip Hillcrest section of San Diego. She’s apologizing for the absence of her bandmates, John Paul Labno and Michael Krechnyak, with whom she formed Grand Ole Party a few years back. If her politeness is a little disappointing, it’s only because the trio’s music, which revolves around her knife-like vocals, is some of the fiercest funk-rock you’d ever want to hear.
Born from a series of freewheeling jam sessions, the band is busting through clubs and festivals across the country this election year behind a fiery debut, Humanimals, now out on DH Records. Listening to the album, you might picture a dominating, womanly presence bucking and writhing around a mic stand, firing off lines about temptation and regret with the ferocity of Grace Slick and the animation of Karen O. But that’s not what you see when GOP plays live. Gundred is actually the band’s drummer, and she sings her shrill lead vocals through a Britney Spears-style headset mic. “We set up the drums at the front of the stage. That way, I can still make eye contact with the audience,” she says. “I think it works in our favor because we’re all right up there in a line, so maybe it’s even more engaging than usual.”
The setup suits the band’s dynamic perfectly: they’re not a singer-and-backup band so much as a three-headed monster. It was Labno, the guitarist, who encouraged Gundred to belt like a rock singer in the first place. “I had to kind of coax her,” he confesses. Like Gundred, he’s surprisingly reserved, claiming he’d rather read a book than go to a party—the kind that the band’s name refers to, not the typically conservative political organization favored in red states. “If anything,” says Gundred, “we’re an alternative to what people might think of this year when they hear those words.”
After all, Grand Ole Party (the band), is a product of a blue-state background. Gundred and Labno met outside a sight-singing exam as music students at UC Santa Cruz in the early 2000s. Labno eventually asked Gundred, who was studying classical and jazz voice, to sing on some demos for his band the Virgin Suite. “I told her to pretend she was alone by the water and sing like a sea nymph.” The results stunned them both. “Before this all happened,” Gundred admits, “I was just a pretty-voiced soprano.”
Then the threesome that is now GOP moved to San Fran and started jamming together: Gundred picked up the drums and Krechnyak, whom Labno had met while Gundred was studying abroad, began playing bass. “We were having these very fun music nights at our house,” Labno says. “The stuff we played together sounded like real songs right away.”
Bored with the Northern California music scene, the threesome returned to San Diego as a bonafide band. It didn’t take long for the outfit to create a buzz on their local club scene. With Rilo Kiley’s Blake Sennett producing, Humanimals has that L.A. sleaze-rock sound that pervades Rilo’s Under the Blacklight. except GOP’s songs are way leaner–and even catchier. They sound more like White Stripes demos than the wispy Fleetwood Mac hits Rilo’s recent stuff has been compared to. And Labno’s intricate guitar riffs often take on an Eastern creepiness that complement lyrics which delve into mysticism. On the folkloric “Gypsy March,” Gundred sings, “I had a vision when I was ten/of a caravan across the sand/of beasts and wares and gems and men/out to start again.” Other tracks, like “Nasty Habits” and “Bad, Bad Man,” live up to the album’s moniker, unearthing the dirty secrets of human nature in the form of Gundred’s wild-child rock-squawk. Which is why, when she says things like, “I’ve always been really shy,” it’s kind of hard to believe her.
