Coming from Alan MacEwen, lead singer and guitarist for The Grandsons, the history behind this 20-year-old band, which began in the summer of 1986, is tantamount to the great American rock-n-roll dream — a group of old McLean High School friends who hit the road after college graduation with the desire to play music around the country and the safety of a diploma if things go wrong.
"We made some rudimentary demos — it was the height of the do-it-yourself punk rock era," recalls MacEwen. "With a demo done on the cheap, we secured a few shows. We wanted to go to all of the cool music cities like Atlanta, New Orleans and Memphis. That was a fun experience because if we couldn't link the tour dates, we would at least be in a cool area with music."
AT THE END of the year long tour the band decided to cross the line between hobby and profession by quitting their day jobs. At the time, MacEwen worked as a temp around Northern Virginia while his band mate, saxophonist Chris Watling, held a job at the Environmental Protection Agency.
"Its not frightening when you're 22 and living in a group house," said MacEwen. "Arlington real estate was a different thing than it is today. We all went to college so if it didn't work out, we wouldn't be living in a refrigerator box."
But it did work out and now 20 years later the band is celebrating their anniversary with a performance at Wolf Trap this Friday, Nov. 24, billed as a 20th Anniversary Homecoming show, and releasing the second volume of "Live at the Barns: The Legendary Wolf Trap Recordings," which is an homage to some of the musical forces that influenced their witty and playful sound.
"In Volume-One we tried to make it songs we'd never recorded in studio before," said MacEwen. "We did a lot of covers of artists that inspired us. We decided with Volume-Two to take the same approach."
Such covers include Art Neville's "Zing, Zing," Danielle Howle's "I'll Be Blue," and The Graverobbers "Scratch My Youth Off."
STEEPED HEAVILY in New Orleans R&B, The Grandsons' sound is what you would expect from an arsenal of horns, guitar, organs and tight syncopation of a rhythm section. Their sound stems from an early discovery of the Memphis-based Sun Recordings label — which birthed Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, to name a few — and musicians like Sam Butera and Slim Gaillard. The latter two had a profound effect on how MacEwen envisioned music.
"I think they inhabit this sort of flip and sarcastic vibe," he said. "Slim Gaillard is sort of a jazz comedian. He took jazz, hipster bee-bop and embraced it and made fun of it. It's outrageous and making fun of the established order."
According to MacEwen, he saw the same style in Sam Butera, who was a musician's musician performing in Las Vegas. Butera would take jazz and pop standards and make light of them while other musicians sat in the audience. MacEwen claims this taught him that "there was nothing wrong with keeping things light-hearted."
"You can be just as impressed with the artistry of it as much as you can with rock-n-roll art," he said.
With two-decades of touring under The Grandsons' belt, including The Kennedy Center, numerous canvases of North America and far reaching cities such as Taipei, Taiwan, MacEwen is always grateful to return to Wolf Trap — which has presented them 10 times in the past 13 years and allowed the band to use its recording equipment for The Grandsons' two live albums.
"They've been very nice to us," he said. "Its the nicest venue we play in the area. It pays money and seems to have everything to make it a pleasure to play there."