Myth is a powerful thing and, contrary to popular belief, it is not dead. Myths are being made everyday and they still resonate with what Joseph Campbell called monomyth, a term he borrowed from James Joyce’s masterpiece Finnegan’s Wake. Monomyth is a theory that all mythic narratives are variations of a singular human story that are a part of a collective human subconscious. Although our world is smaller than ever with inventions like the Internet—which can be seen as an extension of our collective consciousness—a paradoxical side effect of our shrinking world is that we have become more isolated. To exist in this world we have to work…hard. While our society was more communal in the past with our hard work benefitting the “tribe,” the modern world has forced us to be more self-focused. This is detrimental to that very thing that makes human, our myths, our human story and music is a huge part of that mythology and sings our human story.
Here in Colorado we like to think of these things, and recently Colorado based band Grant Farm has tackled these very issues with their new concept album Kiss the Ground. The album was recorded in the mountains at Chris Sheldon’s Mountain Star Studio near Rollinsville with the help of engineer Andrew Lundsford who also co-produced the album. Listen Up Denver! was fortunate enough to chat with Tyler Grant about how they are celebrating, curating, and creating their own myths to add to the collective conscious but also to do as Joseph Campbell would say and “follow your bliss.”
Kiss the Ground has been described as “a concept album based on the struggle of the working class in the modern world, and the overcoming of those struggles through faith, hard work and spirituality.” We were curious as to how the idea came about and Tyler Grant gave us the low down. “We’re kind of going through it just like everybody else. We’re in this society where we’re not for want of comfort or security or food. We’re not starving; we have a good life. But you have to work all the time to maintain that. It’s such a struggle just to buy into society these days. You’re not really allowed to be poor. You have to log in and deal with the man so to speak. We talk about a lot of that kind of stuff on the album,” said Grant.
Tyler’s sentiments bring to mind the words of another mystic visionary poet, John Lennon, who famously sang “A working class hero is something to be.” The full lyrics to Lennon’s song resonate with what the Grant Farm is trying to put down – there’s that collective subconscious again – but ironically Tyler’s words also bring to mind another product of modern society, the hashtag. A popular one these days is #thestruggleisreal. It certainly is for traveling troubadours, as Tyler explains.
“For a Rock & Roll band traveling around the country it’s a real struggle. You’re not making very much money but you’re doing what you love and believing in it. But you still have to pay your bills and pay your taxes. We all get home and we still have to work. We do side gigs and we teach lessons. We have other jobs that we do but just to maintain the band itself is a full time job for all of us. So you kind of get tired sometimes, and we feel like it’s not really right to spend that many hours devoted to work. But that’s what’s expected in modern society. So that’s the issue we’re addressing. We’re not complaining, but should you really have to struggle this hard to buy in? Is there a way that you don’t have to work 60 hours a week and enjoy your life? It’s like Thoreau in Walden where he talks about this man who builds a house and has to work most of the time just to maintain it,” Grant said.
How does mythology come into the picture you might ask.
“There’s a bunch of mythology tied into all that [the struggle] as well as archetypal discourses. You can think of this album sort of like our Workingman’s Dead. In the Grateful Dead music almost every song has some sort of mythology tied into it, Bob Dylan, all the great songwriters do it. We started really getting into that this year and actually studying up on some of those archetypes. Sean [Macaulay] brought in three songs that are based on specific archetypes. One of them is The Wanderer, one is The Innocent One, and the other is The Monarch King. Those are actually three of the song titles on the album and it’s like a little trilogy. An archetypal and mythological story that weaves through the program. We put all these elements together and it kind of crystalized into this thing that we didn’t even expect that it would be. We’re hearing it as these archetypes and mythological symbols are really sort of tying it into things we understand on a subconscious level, and also tying it in with the history of our society and civilization.”
So, Grant Farm deftly weaves in mythology with songs of struggle to offer up a solution to the problem that modern society has presented us with. Human beings have always been in competition with one another—we are animals after all. We compete for resources; we compete over faith and spirituality. But what we can learn through mythology and by extension our collective conscious is that we don’t have to compete. In Kiss The Ground, Grant Farm imagines a world where the problems of modern society are overcome through faith and spirituality, which are not mutually exclusive.
“In the band we are all really kind and caring people and I believe that all of humanity deep down is of that way. Those who aren’t that way have been conditioned otherwise. We’re born to care, and be good people, to be honest and have faith in one another and in what you’re doing. And to just have faith in the positive outcome of your life and all those around you,” Grant says. “The spiritual side of it is another thing entirely. That’s a belief in something greater than yourself, the great mystery, the great unknown, the great spirit of which you can study and learn about and introspect with but it’s not really meant to be explained. The only way you can really comprehend it is to have faith. That’s what we believe about that, and being involved with music is a real direct connection to the spirit. We as musicians have that whether we know it or not. If you’re playing music you’re a spiritual kind of being. People find it in other ways, they find it through family and through experiences that give you faith in others and in humanity.”
Well said Mr. Grant. The message is that we should use our faith and spirituality to evolve away from the not so great aspects of our society. But we don’t have to work against nature, and if anything that is something that mythology teaches us. That is why the name of the album, Kiss the Ground, is so fitting. It evokes a sense of being connected and represents not the last step in the journey, but a step that completes the circle and connects us together in the great wheel of life.
If you’re not excited about Kiss the Ground by now then we don’t know what would do it! Here are the dirty details. The Grant Farm will be celebrating the release of the album on Friday, April 8 at Cervantes’ Other Side with Frogs Gone Fishin’ and in Fort Collins at The Downtown Artery on April 9. The official release of the album digitally, on CD, and on vinyl is June 10, but if you want a copy before that you’ll have to attend the CD release in either Denver or Fort Collins to pick up your copy. You can also pre-order Kiss the Ground via the band’s website. See below for ticketing information.
GRANT FARM KISS THE GROUND RELEASE PARTIES
DENVER
Friday, April 8
Cervantes’ Other Side
Tickets: $10 Adv. $15 DoS
Purchase Here
FORT COLLINS
Friday, April 9
Downtown Artery
Tickets: $15 Adv. $18 DoS
Purchase Here
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