By: Quentin Young, secondstorygarage.com
Oddball singer-songwriter John Grant, formerly of Denver alt-rock band , will return to Colorado to play Boulder’s Fox Theatre on Oct. 24 after a lengthy professional hiatus from the state.
After The Czar’s broke up in 2004, Grant left Colorado and developed a successful solo career. His debut, “Queen of Denmark,” won him praise from the likes of Elton John and Sinead O’Connor, who covered its title track on her 2012 release “How About I Be Me (and You Be You)?” Grant comes to Colorado in support of his third studio album, “Grey Tickles, Black Pressure,” which came out Oct. 9.
Excerpted below, called Grant at his home in Iceland to talk about his mindset going into the Boulder show, his difficult associations with the area and more.
Read the full interview .
I understand you haven’t been back to Colorado in quite a while. Is that correct?
I come at Christmas every year to see my brother and sister and see my friends, so I’ve been back there, but I haven’t played there since The Czars fell apart and I started my solo career. Itap sort of a — well, not sort of, (the Fox show is) a big deal for me personally.
Was that a conscious choice on your part?
Yeah, I think in some ways it was … Part of it was just that I was trying to make my way and was busy doing that. But I also didn’t want to return until I felt ready to do so … Itap a big one for me, because thatap the show (in your home state) where you don’t really want to do it unless you’ve succeeded, you know, unless you’ve gone out into the world and succeeded … At least half the people in the audience know you and they know you well, they’ve seen you at your worst, and they’ve gone through a lot with you and they’re the people that really know you. Itap a scary one. And then you’ve got family, you’ve got people from high school, teachers, people like that. Yeah, it was definitely a decision on my part.
Itap so interesting to hear you talk like that, because you’ve worked with some of the top names in the industry and have done some amazing things, and yet coming back to play in Boulder is such a big deal.
Itap probably the biggest deal that there is. Itap family and friends and itap facing a lot of negative stuff that I’ve experienced there in my life. I mean, Boulder is where I basically had my heart broken pretty badly … I lost my mother to lung cancer in Denver, and I had to recovery from alcohol and drugs in Denver, and my band fell apart in Denver, so there’s a lot of pain and failure associated with that place. And itap not really the place’s fault. Itap the baggage that you have connected to that place
For example, I found out that I had HIV in Sweden … And even though I loved that place and met so many wonderful, wonderful people there, after that happened to me I sort of went away from there … But, you know, Denver has some of the greatest people I know. The people I care about most live there, and so it is probably the most important place for me … I’ve put a lot of the past behind me and dealt with a lot of things, so I wanted to go back and in a very positive way and sort of share with my friends and family the things I’ve been experiencing, because I’ve been experiencing some really incredible things in the past five or six years now.
