Behind the music in Birmingham: Monarchs kick off 2009

Before she created Monarchs in summer 2007, Celeste Griffin didn’t think she could sing. But with encouragement from musical friends, Griffin began writing songs and soon was performing around Birmingham. She’s just completed her first semester of graduate work in urban planning at the University of Texas, but Monarchs continue to book shows every time Griffin returns home.

The band is currently composed of Griffin on vocals and piano, Van Hollingsworth on bass, Matt Casey on guitar and Josh Cannon on drums. Jeanette Brabston will join on violin for this week’s show. They’ll play the Sugar Bowl of Rock with The Magic Math and Red Harp at Bottletree on Jan. 2. The Magic Math is Van Hollingsworth’s new project, and Red Harp features Garret Kelly of Wild Sweet Orange. “It’s kind of cool because it’s bands that aren’t around much,” Griffin says.

This week Griffin chatted with Birmingham Box Set about the challenges of making music in two cities and her creative growth over the past year and a half.

Birmingham Box Set: How has the band progressed in the past year and a half?

Celeste Griffin: Now I basically have two bands: I have my Austin version and my Birmingham version. I’ve just gotten now to where I have the Birmingham band where I really like it. …  They’re all just so dependable and talented and creative. They just make the songs a lot stronger.

… I’ve just gotten to the point where I’m like these are my players. And they’re into it. They’re really into the music. That’s the biggest criteria to me. When I’m playing my own songs and essentially it’s my project that I’m asking them to play on it and asking for their time … It’s not fun if they don’t actually want to be doing it and they don’t see it as, ‘Oh, this is a cool opportunity for me,’ which is how I kind of feel about these guys. [It’s] something they can enjoy.

BBS: How do you split your time with two different sets of people, between here and Austin?

CG: It’s hard. It’s hard getting one group where you want it, and it takes a lot of energy to coordinate people, practices, learning the songs, setting up the gigs. So doing it two different places just takes double the energy. And Austin, I didn’t know anybody when I moved there. So starting a band was kind of an interesting process.

… It’s kind of cool because the guys I’m playing with in Austin are really fun. We’ve got a bunch of shows set up when I get back in town that are good shows and venues. It’s cool.

… The members could change, and I’m Monarchs, essentially. At the same time, I like to feel like a unit. But yet, there’s only so much commitment I can really ask for at this point and that they’re going to offer.

BBS: How did you go about finding band members in Austin?

CG: I called Van [Hollingsworth]. Van went to Belmont, and I asked him, “If you were walking in your music building and you saw a sign that was looking for a guitar player or bass player, and it would be something that you would actually be interested in, that you would think was cool, what would it say?” And so he helped me go through designing a little poster thing that I put up in the music building. I’d been in Austin for like a week.

The next day I got a call from my guitar player, who is in his 30s and is getting his master’s in guitar. He’s so cool and now one of my closest friends in Austin. He’s a really good player. He knew a drummer, and then I had another friend that I met that knew a bass player. I went to a Wild Sweet Orange show there and I met this girl there. She’s real sweet. She sings so she started singing harmonies.

It’s networking. There’s a lot of networking in music.

BBS: Can you tell me more about the Austin music scene? It’s obviously a big music town.

CG: It’s definitely bigger—obviously. There are a lot more bands, whereas here in Birmingham, all the kind of bands on the scene I’m friends with, or I’ve dated, or write songs with them, or we played together. It’s a lot of growing up in the same city.

Then there, a lot of people moved there to do it. People really want to make careers out of it a bit more.

I’m just now sort of starting to tap into the area that I want to be in, where I’m playing with the kind of bands that I play with here. Austin of course has some sort of staple local bands—the kind of bands that get that kind of audience that I would want to be playing. … It took a little while to kind of break into, just not knowing people. But now just by being friends with people you can be connected.

It’s the same in that different bands there, one band has a side project of another band and they’re friends with this band and that band. It’s just a community of bands. It’s a similar thing, the same vibe on the local scene. They know each other, they play together. There are a lot of venues, but there are just a handful of ones that the kind of group I would be in play at.

BBS: How do you balance being a grad student and playing music?

CG: It’s kind of been similar to how it was here [working]. I have two jobs. I have two goals. I want to pursue my music and I want to get this degree. … I’m interested in seeing if they could line up in any way. I’m interested in revitalization type work, maybe even warehouse districts, making them art studios or areas that are affordable for artists to live and tie into the music community.

It’s hard sometimes, but there are pros and cons because I’m drawing from two different things. I have two different interests and two different loves and two different worlds of people to know. But yet sometimes I feel kind of divided, because I may want to go on a tour. I’m about to go record and I don’t know that I want to send it to a label or anything because I can’t really start pushing anything until about a year and a half, until I’m done [with school]. I’ll just wait and keep trying to build fans in Austin and go from there.

… There’s no formula. There’s no, “now that you love music and you’re recording it and you’re playing, this is how you get your music where you’re going. People want different things with it, and it happens different ways with everybody. The level it happens on is so varied. The market is so saturated.

But I also just feel like, when I write or play, I absolutely love this and I feel like I’m really talented and these are good. I feel like I make good music and people would like it if they heard it, and I feel this kind of burn to have people hear it. I feel like it’s eating me if it’s not getting out there. I have to grow it. I want to grow it. Even if I just write a song and I haven’t played it for somebody in two days, not even just a friend, I feel sad.

People have different relationships with songwriting. For me, when I write I want to hear feedback. I want people to hear it. I want people to listen to it. I’m all excited. And I love performing.

BBS: How have you grown creatively?

CG: My voice has improved a lot because I never sang before. I can sing stuff I wouldn’t have probably been able to sing before. A lot of it comes from confidence.  I have a hoarse voice, so it can get hoarse and weak, which stinks.

One thing I did recently was I remade a song, which I’d never done before. I made my own version of “Addicted to Love” by Robert Palmer.

… Creatively, the area I’m getting into is kind of ideas for shows—transitions and interludes, old time-y stuff. I did a lot of West African dance and I really like hip-hop. I always have. So I’m connecting with a lot of African beats and just kind of playing around with that. I redid some Lil Wayne songs, like a Lil Wayne medley. My bass player in Austin, he made a sample and we did a cover of that on Halloween. We had all these interesting transitions. We played “Everybody Wants to be a Cat” from the Aristocats.

… I’ve gotten to a point where, on stage, I can just kind of enter some zone where I’m just kind of out of it and I can really kind of go with the songs and be there. That’s really cool because I know I appreciate when I feel similar things from artists.

As far as my writing, I’ve started to write some shorter songs and I think that may be from maturing as a songwriter. They were a little lengthy in the beginning. They’re a little bit shorter, the recent ones. Two of the recent songs I’ve written on the piano may be the most powerful songs I’ve ever written. The songwriting is improving.

BBS: You’re about to return to the studio to record a second EP with your Birmingham band. Will that be all-new material, or will there be songs people have heard you play in town?

CG: They’ve heard me play some of them because we played the Nick over Thanksgiving when I was back in town. We’re still trying to whittle it down because I have a lot of songs. It’ll be new stuff and maybe a couple old ones that we didn’t have time to record when I recorded the first time … They’re kind of swing your hips and clap your hands songs and I thought I should record them, even though they’re not necessarily my favorite songs.

We’re going to try to record six full band songs and then two just me live, just me sitting down at the piano straight through and me sitting down at the guitar and just play. I’m going to try to do that Robert Palmer, “Addicted to Love,” live.

BBS: What should people expect to see at this weekend’s show?

CG: They should expect to see a soulful concert with genuine songs. … They get to see a girl as the front person, which isn’t that common with the bands here. And also a girl who will rock out and get into it. I hope people describe it as captivating.

Visit Monarchs’ Myspace to listen to the band, and keep an eye on that space for information on shows and where to buy the upcoming EP. The Oak EP is available at Renaissance Records. The Magic Math, Red Harp and Monarchs will play Friday at Bottletree. Doors open at 8 p.m. and tickets are $7.