The Lantern The student voice of The Ohio State University
Growing up as a coal miner’s kid, one learns to push. Pushing to get food on the table. Pushing to clothe one’s hide. Pushing to get the coal out. Sweating. Bleeding. Getting dirty. Finding respite in rock ‘n’ roll.
But sometimes one must push themselves out of the mines; the dust gets to be too much. The money’s not so hot. Coming home tired just isn’t the best way to come home.
So one pushes the music. They push the sound, the levels, the instruments. But they’re tough, from the mines, so nothing breaks until they do.
There’s coal in the tracks of Grafton’s self-titled debut CD. It’s thick and it’s loud, and it pushes.
It’s only natural for a coal miner’s son, grandson and great grandson to push. It runs in their blood; it runs in their music.
The record explodes out of the speakers in a mess of Donovan Roth’s bass, Jason McKiernan’s drums and Lou Poster’s guitar and country-rocked vocals. The instruments fall all over each other. It bleeds together and swirls into a cloud of dirty, shuddering, stubborn rock ‘n’ roll – exactly what one would expect to force its way out of a West Virginia coal mine.
It’s hard to find folk music like this anymore.
It’s music that puts everything the musician has in the world into every song and drives it into the listener’s head. Walking a mile in his shoes, and one’s feet ache as if they have walked ten. It’s not a sad record; it’s an album that makes one feel.
There aren’t any jangling acoustic guitars or sappy “won’t you come ache with me” lyrics. There’s shouting guitar shoved to its limits and lines, such as “she doesn’t need provocation/she was already taken.” These aren’t so much a pitiful lament as they are a call for reprieve. It’s the sound of shouldering a day’s work, and then finding a true love gone.
But when that happens, a coal miner doesn’t turn to his buddy for a shoulder to cry on, he turns to his guitar for an ax to murder with.
Not that the guys in Grafton are murderous psychos; they’re actually quite amiable. They like their card tricks, their beer and fat bottomed women – Freddy Mercury would be proud.
They also love local bands and support them with a steadfast fervor bent on developing and maintaining the Columbus indie rock scene’s autonomy.
It’s people like this that keep rock ‘n’ roll moving forward. They create their own sound and make sure that others who do the same don’t fall by the wayside.
It’s not about the money; it’s about the art, the feeling and the push. It has to be brought up from the inside – the inside of one’s self and the inside of the scene. Once one has it out, they’ve got to keep pushing.
It’s not so different from pushing coal out of a mine. Maybe that’s why Grafton’s so good at it.
Grafton will perform a CD release show at Bernie’s tomorrow night with A Planet for Texas and the Bygones.
