A lump the size of Texas rises in my throat when I first think of writing about my friend John Grant, “the rock star!”
I wouldn’t use that label had he not once used it himself, years ago, and snidely. Denver was John’s home then, the Czars were his band, and waiting tables at Carmine’s on Penn was his job.
We spent too many late nights at that restaurant, making some of the bad decisions that now fuel John’s songwriting: “I wanted to change the world, but I could not even change my underwear.”
The Colorado-reared musician (now living in Europe) continues to surf a wave of critical praise for his first solo album, 2010’s “Queen of Denmark.” He’d been due in Denver this weekend for a rare headlining show, one stop on a small U.S. tour that was canceled at the last minute.
“Rock star training” was how John used to joke about practices with the Czars, whose music some described as poetic shoegazer rock wrapped in alt-country. That Colorado band’s speedy rise and crawling decline, roughly between 1994 and 2004, was hard to watch from the outside — and suffocating from the inside.
The ghost of the Czars still haunts Denver music, and John Grant is far from the only former member of that band who continues to be active and successful in music.
Former Czars drummer Jeff Linsenmaier, for instance, tours, plays and records with the Fray, Dust on the Breakers and Wovenhand. (Check out his blog at .) And former Czars guitarist Roger Green is a music and language scholar and prolific local player who’s just released the album “Harder to Tell.” (He blogs at .)
For Grant, time away from Denver has lent him perspective on the Czars.
“It was like a relationship that lasted 10 years and should have lasted one,” says Grant, now seven years sober. “But I have to take responsibility for who I was during that time. I was somebody who was still completely avoiding himself, seeking escape in alcohol and drugs, just wanting to transport my mind someplace else.”
So why should I feel emotional over John now?
Now that his album has topped music-industry best-of lists for 2010 and was named Album of the Year by Mojo magazine. Now that Grant’s on the road for months, playing well-attended shows and seeing cities that even he, a 42-year-old linguist, had never visited.
Now that Sinead O’Connor plans to cover his album’s title song on her next project.
The album, “Queen of Denmark,” was born of the self-loathing planted in my friend as a gay kid growing up in conservative middle America, and cultivated with severe depression and addiction. It hints at the ’70s folk and pop music that Grant loves, along with his insatiable appetite for electronica and cultural kitsch.
The album pairs quiet instrumentation with thoughtful lyricism delivered in a baritone that music writers have described as “tender,” “captivating” and “sublime.” I have seen Grant’s singing bring tears to the eyes of strangers.
But maybe thinking of him now makes me blue because he hasn’t been back to Denver in months.
Denver in his rear view
So in April, I tracked Grant down via Skype. I found him in Paris, where he was taking a breather from the road.
After living here for about 20 years, my friend left Denver for New York City in 2006. I know that thinking of “our” city now can take him in a dark direction. He certainly goes there in his music.
“Most of the bad things that have happened to me happened in Denver,” he says. “It’s not Denver’s fault that I feel this way. It’s because of what has happened in my life.
“But I do have close friends and family there,” he continues. “So it’s not a place that I will ever be done with.”
Phew.
Earlier in the year, my mom read an interview with Grant in the London newspaper The Independent and pronounced it “heartbreaking.” As he often does now, the musician spoke frankly in that piece about romantic and artistic desperation and thoughts of suicide.
“That’s just John,” I said, knowing him as someone whose demons coexist with high intellect, sharp wit and impossible charm. Consider that, outside of music, Grant became certified as a Russian medical interpreter in New York City while holding a coveted position at celebrity chef Tom Colicchio’s flagship restaurant, Gramercy Tavern.
He might have stayed in that Big Apple life had it not been for Texas folk-rock band and Bella Union labelmates Midlake. In addition to touring extensively with Midlake in recent years, John finished “Queen of Denmark” in Midlake Country — Denton, Texas.
“They wanted to give me a platform and a place to feel comfortable enough to do what I wanted to do,” he says. “That means they were allowing me to stay with them for free. They were letting me use their studio for free, and they were working as my musicians for free. It was an amazing thing.”
The story comes as little surprise to me, someone who has observed Grant woo friends easily here and abroad.
Not that this man is without flaws. I remember some 15 years ago, a sweet, smart, messy-handsome guy who felt jilted by John. He told me he thought the musician was the type of person who uses up friends and moves on.
Self-assurance surfaces
But to me, to know this artist is to bask in his beauty and his baggage, and to embrace the whole of it — as he will do for you.
Denver visual artist David Zimmer has been listening to “Queen of Denmark” on and off as he prepares a handful of abstract video works for the upcoming Museum of Contemporary Art Denver exhibit, “Another Victory Over the Sun” (opening Thursday).
Zimmer knows Grant, too. He sees more self-assurance in John now than in the past, thanks to artistic freedom and hard-won sobriety.
“He’s always been confident in his voice,” Zimmer says, “but he’s getting to where he’ll belt it out now, which is cool.”
Dan Grant, one of John’s brothers, is sometimes taken aback by just how transparent his younger sibling is now in music and the press.
“It’s like, ‘Wow, he’s really laid it out there,’ ” says the elder Grant, an insurance agent and part-time Fillmore Auditorium bartender. “I see some of the things he says in his interviews, and I’m like, ‘Dude, do you really need to talk about that?’ “
Of his three siblings, Dan says, he and an older brother, Jim, were steered toward sports, while the younger kids, John and sister Susan, were encouraged in music. (Enter John’s song “Silver Platter Club”: “I wish that I was good at football, baseball and lacrosse / Darts and basketball, poker, golf and chess.”)
“He’s never been completely comfortable in his own skin,” Dan Grant says of the musician. “They say that’s good for artists.”
But big brother also acknowledges what all of John’s “Denver peeps” know: That masked by sarcasm and self-effacing humor, this friend’s sensitivity cuts deep.
“With his mental makeup,” says his brother, “it’s really hard on him . . . John is a ridiculously complex guy.”
Elana Ashanti Jefferson is a Denver Post features writer and editor, a periodic contributor to Reverb () and a lifelong music fan.
