Groobees


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Groobees
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GROOBEES Singer/Songwriter; Country-Rock Amarillo, TX; 1996 - 2001 (We will miss you guys.) The Groobees are a Texas music band in just about every sense of the term as well as the words within it. First of all, they are one of those musical units that is genuinely a band. One can hear the interplay and feel the unity in the melodies and grooves they create together. When it comes to being musical, The Groobees not only offer a vast range of instrumental accents, lacing accordion, mandolin, and banjo over guitars(both electric and acoustic), keyboards, bass, and drums, but create songs that carry stories, imagery, emotions, and meaning in the lyrics along with giving each player the room to shine. And while they may not sing about such overworked Lone Star State subjects as beer, dancehalls, and two-stepping, The Groobees do reflect the breadth and depth of the music found in Texas, flavoring their songs with elements of rock, country, folk, pop, blues, and more. And getting back to just how much The Groobees are a genuine band, that fact is also revealed in how all that they do comes out sounding like nobody else but The Groobees. That distinctive Groobees touch is found in spades on Buy One, Get Eleven Free, the third album by the Amarillo-based quintet. Brimming with the charm and vitality that has won the group a burgeoning following throughout their home state, it's a collection of 14 songs that ultimately coheres into a true album--one where each selection joins with the others to create a cohesive whole. Starting with the invitation of "Let's Go Out Tonight," Buy One, Get Eleven Free follows The Groobees out on the road as well as taking the listener into the band members' hearts. "Our albums are snapshots of where we are," explains Susan Gibson, one of the band's lead singers, and mistress of just about any acoustic instrument with strings. Hence one can envision life as a Groobee in the witty "Ballad of an Opening Band," or those late nights on the long highways trying to get back from a gig with some help from "Cheap Trucker Speed." As well, there's life back home, where achieving "Cloud Nine" and a "Perfect World" takes work and commitment, or where a lover lives among "Old Boyfriend's Things." With songs by both Gibson and Scott Melott, the band's other lead singer as well as resident keyboard wizard and adjunct guitarist, Buy One, Get Eleven Free compresses a wealth of experience into the digital bytes of a single CD. While Melott contributes everything from the snappy rocker "Down In Flames" to the classic Texas storytelling of "George & Lucille," Gibson displays her knack for anthemic personal expression that has already won her major country chart success on such stirring new numbers as "The Last Word," "Two Hometowns," and "You Came Along." All told, it's an album with as big a sky and vast horizons as the wide open spaces--be patient and we'll get to that subject in a while--of their West Texas homeland. It may be only natural that the five Groobees found one another, Amarillo being what it is. The group started out as a foursome of Melott, guitarist Gary Thomason, drummer Todd Hall, and bassist Michael Devers, who is now the band's manager, and was ably replaced by Bobby Schaffer. They'd made something of a name for themselves--the Groobees moniker comes from a character in "The Adventures of Gumby & Pokey"--playing a deft combination of modern and vintage rock on the West Texas club scene, and had nearly completed recording an album when Gibson, who used to play duo gigs with Thomason, fell into their orbit. Gibson had already forged a good start on a solo career performing in Amarillo and while attending college in Montana. She ended up singing on the recordings and coming along to the gigs, and became a catalyst for The Groobees to develop their own distinctive albeit varied musical sensibility. A self-released debut album, Wayside, produced by Texas music guru and steel guitar god Lloyd Maines, started spreading their music beyond the Panhandle. A second CD released by the Los Angeles-based Blix Street Records brought the band national attention from the likes of the Gavin radio trade (which praised the disc's "easy feel and dead-on musical honesty") and Country Weekly (where it was observed that the band's music "sticks with you like peanut butter"). At the same time, the group kept forging an ever larger circuit of gigs in Texas and surrounding states, thanks to a captivating live presence that woos listeners into becoming, as the San Antonio Express-News observed, "not only fans but proselytes." Buy One, Get Eleven Free, released on the band's own Downtime Records, should spread the charm of The Groobees that has already won over Texas into even further quarters. And while deaf-eared music business pundits may advise the band to whittle their sound down to one style that fits the divisions in the record bins, it's the band's winning combination of musical elements and genres that is actually, to borrow a lick from Gibson, their best feature. As Hall observes, "Our music is kind of like our weather in Amarillo. If you don't like the song you're hearing, just wait another two or three songs and you'll probably hear something that you like. It's just like the weather around here: it's raining and then it's snowing and then it's windy and then it's still." The richness found within the music made by The Groobees derives from not just their inclusive musical tastes and abilities, but also out of the very nature of being a genuine band. "Our songs would not be what they are if it were not for the very people who are playing on them," asserts Gibson. "My most favorite thing to see is those guys breathing life into something I wrote down at two in the morning on a cocktail napkin." Melott agrees. "Any song that we've ever done wouldn't be the same without all of us playing on it." It's that mercurial magic that keeps winning The Groobees more fans every time they play, and bonds the members together in their aim to forge a career for the long yet rewarding haul. It's a unity also symbolized by the Groobee each of them has tattooed on their arms, and best understood by savoring the organic pleasures of Buy One, Get Eleven Free. To help The Groobees along their way, a bit of fortune blessed them when Lloyd Maines hipped his daughter Natalie, lead singer of The Dixie Chicks, to Gibson's song "Wide Open Spaces." The resulting hit song and title track to the multi-million selling album has enabled the band to no longer fret over earning enough gas money to make it home from their first ever gig in God knows where, especially as all the band members share in the windfall with Gibson through their group-owned song publishing company--yet another indication of just how much this collection of five folks in indeed a band. Because as Gibson observes, being in a band with friends and enjoying what everyone brings to the music they play is "part of the paycheck, that's for sure." And it's the pleasure The Groobees get from playing music with each other that becomes contagious to the people they play music for. So even if The Groobees are just starting out on what promises to be a long and scenic road in their career, they feel blessed already with the intangible fortune and tangible joys that music can provide. "We're just lucky, that's all I can say," concludes Gibson. "We're lucky to have each other, and even if our goals are not all the same, we are all facing in the same direction." That direction is on the bandstand collectively addressing their growing audience, as well as upwards and outwards from Amarillo to the world.

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Average Rating : 4.9              Total Reviews: 24


Groobees  04/18/2010            
a biast niece
I'm pretty sure I have owned every CD the band came out with and even if i haven't listened to them in years i still could sing along with every song...LOVE LOVE LOVE this music!!!!
Groobees  05/15/2009            
T.G. Caraway
Miss you guys! Yall were the poop.
Groobees  11/20/2007            
naye naye
WHAT?!?!? I haven't had a computer, I live under a rock, and WHAT happened?? Where did they go?? WHY??? If any Groobee out there reads this-you were an awesome group!!! I met you all in 2000 at Gruene Hall and you were honest people with amazing talent!!! I hope to see you again.
Groobees  06/19/2006            
Pilar
I saw the Groobees @ The Railroad Blues in Alpine, Texas several times while going to school there. They, and especially Susan, were and are one of the "funnest" live bands. I don't think anyone then, or even today, can compete with her lyrics. I'm grateful to have seen them perform together, and ecstatic that she has kept on truckin'. Go Susan!!!!!
Groobees  06/22/2004            
Randy S
Best Band that no longer exsists
Groobees  12/19/2002            
Ronholio
Truly one of if not THE top favorites of all time the Groobees Live..... I just know they do... they are aout there with Elvis Somewhere...giggin still.
Groobees  07/14/2002            
a fan
nice very easy to listen to lloyd maines has another talented group to work with
Groobees  03/28/2002            
Vikki Alley
Susan Gibson, and the Groobees are a wonderful band. Their music is unique and just a wonderful band. I've listened to Susan and the Groobees since 1997 when I moved to Amarillo and they are as wonderful the first day I listened to them. Love you guys, keep it up.
Groobees  01/18/2002            
Ashlee Rose
This is the best CD I have ever heard.. Susan Gibson is awesome.. she is my idol I love this CD defnatelty buy it! Best I own!!!
Groobees  06/27/2001            
[email protected]
Wonderful music, great songs, great lyrics.....good stuff!
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