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Victory Events Wedding Expo

Why the ’Boro’s coolest label went all the way to Sanford, N.C. to sign its newest act

By Nate Rau

It wasn’t long ago that a shout out from Rolling Stone meant a great deal more than it does these days. There was a time when the words, “I’m from Rolling Stone,” were something more than a catch phrase for a watered-down MTV reality show.

But even if the godfather of rock ’n’ roll publications has softened over the years, it was still noteworthy when it gave Bucket City’s music scene some love last October. Sure, they didn’t manage to spell the name of our town correctly, but the respect still resonated with local music fans.

Mark our words: Murfreesbroro, Tennesee is about to be the new, like, Montreal. Translation: Assloads of rad bands are coming out of there every other second.

You know the names of local bands to make good nationally?Feable Weiner, The Features, the Pink Spiders. With great local indie bands comes cool local indie labels. It’s a natural progression.

And it doesn’t get any cooler than Grand Palace Records. As you should know by now, Grand Palace is a collective of local entrepreneurial music geeks who have turned Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity into a living, breathing entity. Grand Palace, nestled on Church Street right off the square, houses a record store, a silkscreen shop and a recording studio. In the last year, Grand Palace Records came to fruition by releasing two of the ’Boro’s hottest bands’ debuts, the Turncoats’ Shoot that Girl and Velcro Stars’ Hiroshima’s Revenge, co-released with Happy Birthday to Me Records.

“Our first two releases are very different musically and have accomplished different things,” said Bingham Barnes, who co-runs the silkscreen shop and helps with the label side of Grand Palace. “At this level we can’t accomplish much more than getting a product for the bands to sell at shows, some publicity and a little radio play. We will be able to help our bands out much more once we build our catalog and get better distribution . . . baby steps.”

For the next “baby step,” Grand Palace wandered well outside of Murfreesboro when it added a third band to the label. In fact, Grand Palace reached out all the way to tiny Sanford, N.C. (population: about 23,000) when it inked Dr. Powerful.

Why, when Murfreesboro has such an “assload” of bands, did the label venture into the North Carolina wilderness for its third release?

The answer goes back to Barnes’ college days. Barnes, who also fronts popular local group Glossary, was a diehard Polvo fan in the mid-’90s, when Polvo played with the likes of Sonic Youth and Pavement and earned a rep as a band musicians love.

“Polvo was my favorite band during college,” Barnes said. “They were my Grateful Dead. I saw them countless times including the Omni New Daisy show in Memphis, where they opened for Unwound and Sonic Youth. I have everything they released. I think I have all their T-shirts, too. Crazy, I know.”

So it must have been fate when Barnes and Grand Palace received a demo from Dr. Powerful, whose drummer just so happens to be former Polvo skinsman Eddie Watkins.

Grand Palace co-owner Lynn Weaver writes album reviews for mog.com (in fact you won’t find better-written, Lester Bangs-style reviews anywhere). Watkins stumbled across a Weaver review, and learned about Grand Palace.

A little over two years ago, Gordon Anderson, a cops and courts reporter for the Sanford Herald and casual musician, was hanging out with his buddy, who was a clerk at a Sanford-area video store.

“My friend had told me the former drummer from Polvo had moved to Sanford and came to the video store every so often,” Anderson said.

As fate would have it, Watkins came into the store that day. Anderson boldly approached him.

“He wasn’t really doing anything musically at the time,” Anderson said. “He had a wife and a couple little kids. I just started bugging him to come jam with me. ?Just come fuck around and have some fun.’”

Watkins relented.

“Of course, I was blown away,” Anderson said. “I knew what an amazing band [Polvo was].”

Anderson recruited guitarist Daniel Robinson to join the group. But things really came together when the trio added Andy Rouse on bass.

“Andy might be the most-talented musician of all of us,” Anderson gushes.

It’s Dr. Powerful’s ability as instrumentalists that attracted Grand Palace. Hearing Barnes describe Dr. Powerful sounds eerily similar to his assessment of Polvo.

“Honestly, many average music listeners won’t get it,” Barnes said. “Dr. Powerful is a musician’s kind of band, angular, intriguing and creative writing. It rocks.”

After spending a modest amount of cash to record their first bit of material, Dr. Powerful began looking for a label. The bands was almost ready to put the album out itself when Grand Palace called back.

“Bingham got on the phone and said, ?We can’t give you guys any sort of big advance,’” Anderson said. “But we wanted to work with like-minded people. The more we looked into Grand Palace, the more we liked their do-it-yourself approach.”

Dr. Powerful, who hopes to have the album out in the next couple months, also started teaching itself about the Murfreesboro music scene.

“I hadn’t really heard of Glossary, but when I went on their myspace page, I was just blown away,” Anderson said, adding that The Bubblegum Complex was his favorite of the local bands he’d heard so far.

Barnes also acknowledges Murfeesboro is full of talented bands, but the label doesn’t feel obligated to limit itself to the area.

“Grand Palace is focusing on growing outside of Murfreesboro and at the same time bring the finer aspects of Murfreesboro to light nationally,” Barnes said. “There are hundreds of bands in Murfreesboro, quite a few of them are actually good. But only a handful are truly great. Most of the great bands are already working with more established record companies and don’t need us.”

But Dr. Powerful and Grand Palace seems to be the perfect marriage of musical values and long-term goals. The band will make its way through Murfreesboro around the time its album is released.

“[The future] isn’t something we talk about all that much,” Anderson said regarding Dr. Powerful’s plans after this release. “For me, just being with people like Grand Palace is more than I counted on doing.”

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The Murfreesboro Pulse: Middle Tennessee’s Source for Art, Entertainment and Culture News.

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