Tonight: Grandfather Child Hits the Road, at Warehouse Live

It may just be me, but it seems like it’s been awful quiet lately over in the {Grandfather Child} camp. For a year or two there, Lucas Gorham, Ryan Chavez, Robert Ellis, and Geoffrey Muller seemed to be freaking everywhere, constantly ripping up whatever stage they could get near. They were playing like they were on fire, like they were afraid if they stopped, that’d be the end of it.

And then, well, they just kind of stepped back a bit, or so it seemed; other than this year’s Summerfest, I don’t think the band hadn’t played live since last year’s Summerfest, ’til the Daniel Johnston show two weekends back at Fitzgerald’s. Honestly, I’d started to get a little worried, nervous they’d turn into one of those bands that groans and grumbles and pulls back together once a year but does their own separate thing(s) — and Lord knows, each of these guys has about a half-dozen other bands and projects going on — in the meantime.

As it turns out, the Grandfather Child guys have just had their collective head down, working away at their much-heralded, self-titled debut full-length on New West Records, which is due out 8/28. And leading up to that release, the band heads out on tour for three weeks, veering over to the Pacific Northwest and then coming down the coast & back across the Southwest to wind up in Austin.

Tonight (Thurs., August 2nd) is the kickoff show of the tour, up at Warehouse Live (in the oh-so-intimate Green Room), and it promises to be utterly badass. These guys are mind-blowing live, I swear — they’re all stellar musicians, and Gorham’s crazed, Jerry Lee Lewis-esque raveups on the slide guitar are flat-out mesmerizing (to me, at least).

They’re playing tonight with some darn good bands, too, namely ex-Mackenzies band Mikey & The Drags, {Khruangbin}, & Hamamatsu Tom, all of whom are worth seeing on their own.

Tickets are $8, and they’re very limited for the show — only 125 total, and no presale tickets — so I’d make sure you get up there early. The doors open at 8PM.

Here’s the full tour schedule, for you out-of-towners:

August 2 : HOUSTON, TX | Warehouse Live
August 7 : SEATTLE, WA | Barboza (w/ Futurebirds)
August 8 : PORTLAND, OR | Doug Fir Lounge (w/ Futurebirds)
August 14 : VISALIA, CA | The Cellar Door (w/ Futurebirds)
August 15 : LOS ANGELES, CA | The Satellite (w/ Futurebirds)
August 17 : PIONEERTOWN, CA | Pappy & Harriet’s (w/ Futurebirds)
August 18 : TEMPE, AZ | Sail Inn (w/ Futurebirds)
August 21 : AUSTIN, TX | Stubb’s (inside) (w/ Futurebirds)

Weirdly enough, I actually stumbled across Grandfather Child (the album, that is) completely by accident on Amazon; it came up when I was searching for something completely different, and I spotted it and said, “hey, is that…?”

And lo and behold, it was, complete with cool little MP3 samples of all nine album tracks — so even though you can’t pick up the album until the end of this month, you can get a little taste of it right over here.

I have to admit, it’s not exactly what I’d expected, but I’m liking it all the same. The fiery soul I’ve loved seeing on display live is definitely still there, but on some of the tracks, at least (“Magical Words,” for one), the band’s had some of those rougher edges smoothed off, with the end result being that they sound at points like gently funky ’70s R&B more than anything else.

But hey, it sounds like there’s plenty of that roughness elsewhere on there — “Gonna Have Ourselves A Vision,” “Ride That Train,” & the classic “Waiting For You” — so I’m seriously, truly psyched to hear the thing in its entirety. Keep rollin’ on, y’all.