Rocker Chick Graning calls Knoxville home—again
by Mike Gibson
Though he is one of Knoxville's most accomplished singer-songwriters, and perhaps its most far-flung musical emissary, Chick Graning remains a relatively anonymous presence in his hometown.
Having once enjoyed local notoriety as the guitar player for Teenage Love, one of the city's earliest and most dangerous hardcore punk bands of the 1980s, he's a pretty low-key fellow now, slightly built and usually quiet.
But Graning's low profile owes more to nomadic proclivities than to his unprepossessing manner. Leaving Knoxville for Boston and the Berkelee College of Music in 1987, he's spent the last 15 years on the move, from Boston to Nashville to Providence, R.I. to New York and New Orleans, touring and playing both as a solo artist and as a member of two successful bands. He's also proven himself to be a true rock 'n' roll survivor, a man who in the years since his departure has endured divorce, the dissolution of a major label record contract, and one near-fatal illness.
"Boston and Berkelee were a way for me to get out of town, network with other musicians and find people I wanted to play with," says Graning, who stayed at Berkelee for only two semesters before joining the Nashville-based Anastasia Screamed. "And I learned a thing or two along the way. I got some great ear training at Berkelee, and I took one useless guitar class. I walked into class with a slide in my guitar case, and the teacher told me that slide isn't 'real' guitar. After that, I tuned out whatever he had to say."
Graning would spend four years with Anastasia Screamed before migrating to Providence in 1992, where he dated former Throwing Muses/Belly singer-guitarist Tanya Donnelly.
It was during his two-year relationship with Donnelly that Graning founded Scarce, a four-piece alterna-rock outfit for which he was singer, guitarist and principal songwriter. Though he's been a solo performer for nearly eight years now, he still takes considerable pride in both the band and in their lone 1995 release deadsexy on A&M Records.
"We were a great band; an intense band with really good songs," Graning says. "When we got going, it went quick. There was a 25-label bidding war, we signed with A&M, and 'Boom!' we were at work."
Scarce's success was short-circuited when Graning suffered a brain hemorrhage the summer of deadsexy's release. Hospitalized for three months and in a coma for nearly three weeks, he came out of the experience ill-prepared for the rigors of a major label touring schedule.
"The doctors told me that 95 percent of the people who have what I had don't live through it," says Graning, explaining that the hemorrhage was the result of a congenital weakness in an artery.
"But the label wasn't very enthusiastic about the band after I finally got up and around," he continues. "It made me dizzy whenever I went on stage, but they still wanted me to jump around and perform like I had before.
When Scarce broke up in 1996, Graning began receiving calls from old acquaintances to play shows as a solo artist around the Northeast. Since then, he's gone it alone, embarking on a number of tours both domestically and abroad, and releasing MT, a CD of original songs on the German label wuwton in 2001.
"I wasn't consciously recording an album; it was just of a series of demos I was working on," Graning says of the 11 tracks that comprise MT. "Then this guy in Germany said he wanted to put them out; I figured it was a good way to let people know I'm still alive."
A rugged collection of road-ready rockers, MT teems with the elements that have long characterized Graning's music—the weathered, leathery voice with the surprisingly sweet falsetto, deft but always tasteful guitar playing, and songwriting that recalls any number of classic post-punk influences. "It's more of my shit; X-like, Pixies-ish, Dinosaur Jr.-ish," he says with a laugh.
Graning came back to Knoxville in late 2002, after a new string of misfortunes that included the loss of a regular gig in his then-home New Orleans, and the break-up of his marriage—a brief, star-crossed union with an old girlfriend chronicled on the MT cut "Andrea Doria." His upcoming show at the Old City's Urban Bar and Corner Cafe will be one of the few he's played since his return, his cachet as a live performer in places like New York and Germany notwithstanding.
He believes the problems he's experienced in booking local shows are related to his chosen medium. Though MT is an all-electric affair with contributions from musician friends in other cities, Graning plays his songs live accompanied only by his own acoustic guitar—a move that doesn't go over well with bar-owners looking for patio bards to croon familiar favorites.
"People think if you're an acoustic guitar player, you're doing James Taylor and Jimmy Buffett, and I want nothing to do with that," Graning says. "I've thought about getting a full band together at times, but I don't really want to start another band. I'm enjoying life as a solo artist."
January 29, 2003 * Vol. 14, No. 5
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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