Get On Up Issue #40

Grande Ole Party wants to see you dance

By Maya Kroth
Published: June 1st, 2009 | 12:00pm

Not long ago, on a brisk Friday night at a packed club on the east side of San Diego, Grand Ole Party gave fans a glimpse into the future — and, finally, a good long look at singer-drummer Kristin Gundred. No longer seated captive behind a drum kit, Gundred stood front and center, flanked by guitarist John Paul Labno and bassist Mike Krechnyak, beating on a stand-up “cocktail” drum kit and belting out a riff — “I feel, I feel, I feel I’ll never be the same!” — with a voicebox that made Janis Joplin sound like Janice from The Muppet Show.

Even from behind her old kit, Gundred’s always been able to send sparks of kinetic energy flying — but whatever’s radiating from her now is downright nuclear. It’s all part of GOP Version 2.0, an incarnation that’ll be unveiled late this summer when the San Diego-based trio unleashes its follow-up to last year’s acclaimed Humanimals.

“It’s a lot of fun,” Gundred says of the new kit. “I can literally dance as though I weren’t playing drums.”

If early reports from the studio are to be believed, she won’t be the only one dancing.

“We want people to be moving the whole time,” she says. “Ben has even said he wants every single song to make your head move mechanically, so you can’t not feel the beat.”

The Ben she’s referring to is producer Ben Allen, best known for his work mixing and engineering Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere and its hit single, “Crazy.”

“In researching him before we met, I came across an interview that made me feel like, ‘Oh, dude, this guy will be perfect; he gets it,’” says Gundred, who liked that Allen shared the band’s reverence for both Motown and psychedelic music. She was also impressed that he’d worked with hip-hop artists while engineering at P. Diddy’s Bad Boy Records.

Sure, Allen has credentials for miles, but why would a blues-inflected rock band — whose first record drew comparisons to the Black Keys, White Stripes, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs — seek out a hip-hop producer?

“We’ve always been a rock band you can dance to,” says Gundred. “But I’ve been thinking of this record almost as a dance record. Sure we’re a dance-y rock band — how about being a dance band? The new sound definitely reflects that a lot of time has passed since the songs on our first record were written.”

In the year-and-a-half since Humanimals came out, the trio’s spent months on end packed into a white van while on the road with bands like Rilo Kiley, Spiritualized, Rogue Wave, and Vampire Weekend. They’ve also played festivals including Bonnaroo, Coachella, and South By Southwest, which is where Allen first got wind of them.

“The sound of the band is already really interesting to listen to and certainly interesting to look at,” says Allen, who flew out to San Diego this winter to hear GOP’s new material firsthand. “We’ve been getting the drum parts really mechanical and really motivating and powerful. It’s changed the way [Gundred] is singing, too.”

“I’m really trying to sing a hook that will be very memorable,” says Gundred. “I’ve been listening to a lot of girl-group stuff from the ‘60s, and lately I’ve been all about early Madonna. Even though I may not have heard those songs for eight years, I still know them by heart. That, to me, is what makes it so obvious it’s a good song, so I’ve been writing with the idea in the back of my mind of trying to have catchy vocals.”

Gundred says she’s a better drummer now, too — though she admits she’s “not necessarily doing Keith Moon-type songs.” She’s also added something called a “jingle stick” to her set-up.

“It’s a really awesome invention that is basically a tambourine in a drumstick,” she says.

It’s not the only new sound on the record. There are also more synths, played by Labno, and another special touch that came courtesy of Allen.

“I brought the gong into the situation,” Allen says. “I had to fight tooth and nail to get it in there, but I think now everybody’s pretty used to it.”