Grifters & Shills

Hello friends, and happy December to you!! 

As we head towards the end of this year, we are looking ahead with much on our minds. We have a mix of excitement, uncertainty, concern for the unknown, and open hearts and minds as we continue looking forward. I normally try to keep emails and social media posts short, because that's what they say works best, but I realized I don't know who “they” are, so…a little more length this time. 

First, we want to thank each and every one of you for all you do for us…

One of our home venues in the Houston/Galveston area is the Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe. It’s a place we visit regularly–on both sides of the stage. The Old Quarter is one of those rare and special places in the world–revered by audiences and bands alike–and we are lucky as hell to be able to go there so frequently.

Every New Year’s Day, the Old Quarter hosts a wake in honor of the late songwriter Townes Van Zandt, who died on New Year’s Day in 1997. Musicians who attend the wake are encouraged to play three…

The title track of the album is based on one of us writing about the other, and one of us writing about herself, so we thought both perspectives might provide some good context and back story for this song.

(John) The title track for the album, this one came to life as a simple riff played on a three-string cigar box one afternoon early in the pandemic, when we were trying to get used to the fact that music venues were closed, and everywhere (it felt) was closed. I was playing around with this little guitar…

The story of our now-traditional set closer began in the pandemic, some time after we started doing our “Thursday Happy Hour” livestream. For those who didn’t catch it, the format of the livestream was that we’d make a drink on camera at 5:30pm on Thursday, then play about half an hour of songs afterward–it was a nice way to celebrate happy hour with friends in the “virtual” realm. 

During this time, John was in the midst of finishing his degree in Mathematics, and was pushing himself very hard both in his…

One of the defining moments during the writing of this album was the day that we got the call in April 2021 that our friend Duane Mark (Mark Davenport)…

This album is largely a snapshot of 2020–2021, a period when we had a lot of time to stare at the studio walls and decide how we really wanted to go about this whole Grifters & Shills endeavor. A lot of wonderful people inspired us during that time, joined us as we embarked on new experiments and welcomed us as we all started emerging back out and around each other. This record is for you all.

The Ferguson, Stoll, and Cox families, Sam and Kim Barker, Jennifer "JT" Holland, Michael Helfenstein, Willy T.…

Now for a look back at where this album came from. The story of it began just a few months before the world shut down in 2020. The first song started finding its feet as we moved into a new house and started rebuilding our studio, still riding the high of our last album release. Pandemic and lockdown kicked off before we’d even finished unpacking and derailed all the many grand plans we’d had in place for 2020.

Art follows life follows art, as it goes. We thought the shutdown would last two months, but as it…

Welcome to the release of this new album, and thank you for being here with us for the ride! Over the next couple of months, we’ll be releasing some background about the songs, the inspiration behind them, and interesting stories from the studio as we recorded them. 

This week, we are excited to debut the album art! Our extremely talented friend, Dan Torres, created this artwork, inspired by themes in the songs. After sitting with the lyrics and our ever evolving draft recordings, Dan took to the thrift…

Hello friends,  

In case you haven't heard, our year-end shows are THIS WEEKEND! We've got a very special treat for y'all - our good friends Rock Bottom String Band and Brightwire are joining us on both of these shows:  

Friday Dec. 17th, 8:30pm: Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe 

Saturday Dec. 18th, 8:30pm: Dan Electro's  

Both of these shows are clothing drives as well, as we've done in years past! Clean out your closet, bring a bag of clothes to donate, and we will collect everything and take it Star of Hope…

A long time ago, in a practice room not far away, we started our musical journey together. We met in a band called Blue Funk, which was a full band project. We quickly realized that the two of us shared something special--call it chemistry, call it fate, call it whatever you like. The bottom line is that we stumbled on that thing that you always hope to find. We met through music, and got to know each other through music. So feeling very fortunate to have found each other, we decided to start a project as…