The Grisly Hand tries some new tricks

%{[ data-embed-type=”image” data-embed-id=”57150ad989121ca96b91e24b” data-embed-element=”aside” ]}%

Friday, the Grisly Hand follows up its excellent 2013 full-length, Country Singles, with a new record. And you’ve got to give full credit here: Though it would have been simpler for these six musicians to retread their well-worn Americana for another easy win, lead songwriter and guitarist Jimmy Fitzner wanted to take a different route. “If anyone asks, we’re a rock band,” he writes in an e-mail. The nine songs he attaches to the note — Flesh & Gold‘s contents — bear him out.

Flesh & Gold is not without certain Grisly Hand hallmarks: the warm whine of Mike Stover’s steel guitar, the delicate strings of Ben Summers’ mandolin, co-lead singer Lauren Krum’s sublime twang. But it also breaks new ground. “Regrets on Parting” is a slow jam lent extra soul by a horn section. “Brand New Bruise” finds sultriness in its sizzling blues. All told, the album is the mark of a band that, six years in, is still discovering its strengths.

Flesh & Gold is the first half of a double LP, due out next spring. Ahead of Saturday’s CD-release show at Knuckleheads Saloon, I chatted with Krum and Fitzner about the new sounds.

The Pitch: So Flesh & Gold is the first of two parts. Tell me about the decision to split the releases.

Fitzner: I think part of it is because we wrote and recorded so many songs…. It felt like it was too long to release everything all at once and do it that way. It felt good to separate the nine songs as one piece. We feel like it stands alone. The second half almost works like companion songs.

Krum: I think, too, we really relished the opportunity to put out two releases in a timely manner because we can take a long time to get stuff out — Country Singles came out two years ago, and it took us a long time. With this, it was really a natural selection of songs.

You’ve said that, with this album, you want Grisly Hand to be considered a rock band, and you want to put some distance between the Americana and country genres you’ve been in. Why is that important to you?

Fitzner: I think this is the first record where I was writing a lot of the songs, and kind of looking around and realizing how much talent is in this band. I was really wanting to keep that in mind. When we did Country Singles, you know, the songs were already there — that’s how they came out, that’s how they sounded. And with this record, I guess I was trying to push our sound a little farther. I was no longer afraid to try weird shit with these guys who are so talented, and they were so responsive to everything that I brought to the table. I feel like we were trying weirder stuff, musically, from my brain, and it ended up really shining on the record.

Krum: And speaking for myself, I’m definitely the person that was very newly in love with country music [when we started Grisly Hand], and I almost had to go through this process of realizing that, while there’s parts of it [country] that I adore, it’s not necessarily the most uniting or welcoming genre. Like, you don’t hear people saying, “I like every kind of music but rock!” And I didn’t want to not include anyone in what we were doing, you know? I felt like we could invite more people to the table by calling ourselves a rock band and letting people suss out what that means for themselves.

But you guys have a strong fanbase already. Are you worried about how they’ll feel about the distinction?

Krum: I mean, it’s more about wanting to open up doors than wanting to shut them. And I don’t think anyone who’s seen us and liked us is going to feel alienated. It’s not like we’re doing something crazy. These new songs are meant to sound familiar — they’re going to be like a familiar, warm, comfortable sweater that you can throw on and get cozy with. And I feel like if you like a band, that’s part of the fun — to go along with them and give them a little leeway to grow. And, really, at the end of the day, you can call us a bluegrass band, whatever — I don’t care as long as you listen and like us.

What were some of the challenges you encountered in writing the material for this new album?

Fitzner: One of the challenges was practical. “Regrets on Parting” is kind of an R&B song, and we wanted to play it like an R&B song, but we really weren’t good at that. The song never really sounds in my head like it sounds when the whole band is playing that — it’s not bad, just different. So we woodshedded that for a couple years. We were practicing that from before Country Singles. “Brand New Bruise” was like that, too. With some of those things, it’s like you just need to keep kneading the dough.

It’s not that important to us to have things perfectly cohesive, just to have a sense of where we are. I think there’s little melodies in this [Flesh & Gold], and there’s other stuff that’s years old, and these little pieces have made their way into a song and come back up to the top for us.

Grisly Hand has been together for six years. What has sustained your interest in this group of people throughout the years?

Fitzner: A few members have changed over the years, but me, Lauren and Ben [Summers] pretty much started the band, and I just feel like we still have something to give as friends together in this group. I think once we feel like maybe we don’t have something, we’ll stop — we’re all in other bands, too — but we all feel like we have something to do and say as Grisly Hand. That’s why it doesn’t feel old yet.

Krum: Also, this is the longest relationship of my life, outside of my cat.

Fitzner: I feel like we’re so fortunate. People keep telling us we’re doing a good job, and so that’s encouraging — I’ve been in other bands that are terrible, and we lasted for years because some guy one time was like, “Well, you’re pretty good.”