Planetary Group took some time to get to know Grayson Converse, the lead singer of the Los Angeles based group Spooky Mansion.
P: Tell us about your latest release. How did you come to create it?
GC: What About You?’ is the next song coming out! It’s got all the things that make a song fun: Thoughtful, reflective guitar picking, pump up rocking piano, jangly guitar, and of course a big triumphant ending. Always gotta have a shout chorus at the end – I learned that from Horace Silver records. You take the main theme and tweak it a little and make it big, brash and boisterous at the end. This song is a collection of stories from my life, and stories that I think of quite often. My mother grew up in Manhattan in the 50s and 60s. She was sort of upper crust, park avenue vibes- had to wear white gloves when going out etc. But she didn’t love it and made quite the scene when she showed up to a family dinner wearing denim jeans. She told me how her and cousin Bob would go to the fancy hotels around the neighborhood and start taking furniture out of the lobby and putting it in their car parked out front. They looked like they knew what they were doing, so no one really asks questions. i lived in Cambodia for a bit, working in a music studio. I made friends with this young Cambodian girl who was learning how to work in the studio. We became very close and would talk about music, life etc. One day she didn’t come to work and we finally found out that she had been in a motorcycle accident the night before. Someone hit her and drove away and she wasn’t wearing a helmet. I went to see her at her family home. Her head was giant from swelling and she was not doing very well. She had forgotten how to speak English and she didn’t seem to know who I was at all. I ended up moving away before she ever recovered or remembered that we were close friends. I slipped these stories and more into little one sentence verses. Since I think about them a lot, they seemed important.
P: Share a bit about your musical journey, from when you first started making music until now.
GC: I started playing music when Youtube first came out. We grew up with a grand piano in the house that no one knew how to play. I say the movie Ray and immediately decided I wanted to be a blues pianist. For months I would go upstairs, watch a tutorial video then run down to the piano and try to remember what I had seen. Back and forth, slowly figuring out a few things. I joined jazz band in highschool and when it came time to go to college I decided to get a degree in Jazz Piano Performance. Now that is a degree that has done nothing for my life and no one has ever asked to see .
P: An album you grew up listening to:
GC: Nighthawks at the Diner by Tom Waits. ‘Making a scene with a magazine’ was the most poetic description of jerking off I’d ever heard – not that there are a lot of other competitors. I loved how it bridged the jazz I loved with the lyricism of Bob Dylan and writers like Vonnegut. It was a very important record to hear when I was 14 and perfectly contrasted the Modest Mouse records that I had on repeat.
P: An album that inspires you as an artist (I’m sure there are many, but pick one of your choosing):
GC: Just like many musicians before me, The Pixies record Doolittle showed me everything I was hoping to find out: You don’t have to be a good singer, lyrics don’t have to make sense, rock music can be fun and funny without being stupid or silly. I learned how to arrange songs in terms of volume and instrumentation – put everything in and rock out, then take it all out and whisper above just a bass guitar.
P: The album you currently have on repeat:
GC: Right now I’m rocking The Turtles Present The Battle of the Bands by The Turtles. If you want to hear the single greatest drum break of all time crank up “I’m Chief Kamanawanalea (We’re The Royal Macadamia Nuts)’. The whole record is an extremely soulful, psychedelic and zaney journey. They are amazing songwriters and singers. They know how to play their instruments and understand harmony and melody. But they’re also apparently a bunch of goofball young men because they are constantly cutting off their own amazing inventiveness with tongue in cheek craziness. Then all of a sudden they play ‘Elenore’ , a perfectly written and performed smash hit.
