Every wink, every nod, every twitch of the lip, and every cluck of the tongue he makes is meant for you. It doesn’t matter that there are hundreds of other people in the room hanging on his every word and grooving to his every note. You believe you are the object of every song. He is not telling you a story. He isn’t even making you a part of the story. The two of you are having a personal tete a ‘ tete, with every line. At a Bill Grady show you feel as though you are an audience of one, and you acquire a strange sense of reponsibility for the songs he is singing. You begin to feel like you’ve been involved for a very long time, and you are responsible for your time lived together.
His songs are scenes sung as if in conversation, or within a candle lit room, or the drunken party after everyone who is getting laid has taken off for escapades both real and imagined, holding you, the listener, personally responsible for how the song unfolds; (I’d say I’m sorry to go but I’ve been taken for granted and I just can’t abide by this treatment no more / Cuz I feel my life is much more than just a function of fashion and I’m tired of paradin’ this way ‘cross your runway floor...)
The songs are a marriage of old school Motown R&B style and new fangled lyric wordsmithing a la Jason Mraz. He is a master of all three of his instruments, guitar (think a crooning John Mayer), piano (think Billy Joel) and his voice- gymnastic, elastic, polished, smooth…
It all began in the fourth grade. Bill Grady was forced to take piano lessons from an elderly lady in his neighborhood who had bad breath. While teaching him the basics of how to read notes off the page, she loudly chewed on a variety of smelly sandwiches, and when each lesson was mastered to her satisfaction she would retire the exercise with an adhesive gold star. He pleaded with his parents to allow him to quit. It was decided he would be excused from taking lessons provided he played the instrument for 30 minutes a day. The agreement held. Years later, an actor, Grady claimed he could play guitar in an effort to get a role. It worked, and having only two weeks to convince the world he had an understanding of the instrument, he applied his pianists hands to the strings and quite literally cut his fingers. “I got away with it, but just barely. Its amazing what you can accomplish when you simply decide you have to. I was lucky, really… though I had written songs before on piano, the experience made me pick up the guitar, and it gave me the confidence to sing my own material, and stand on each note, each word, each phrase... And hell, its awfully damn handy to switch between the two when I’m working on a song and it becomes a chinese puzzleâ€
And it is these ‘puzzles’ that are making people stop and take notice. A variety of styles are woven into Grady’s songs (folk, r&b, rock, Latin), and sometimes he sings a song you’d swear was as old as time itself, only to find it is one of his, simply written, and quite recently. With intelligence, wit, and a lot of soul Grady writes, sings, and performs his songs with immense passion and without fear.
The fourth grade was a long time ago. These days, Grady has signed an international distribution deal for his debut album “A Room Called Home†as well as an international licensing deal. He is lending his songs to major motion pictures and television. Coming off of a recent Spring tour, Grady hops across the pond in the Summer of 2008 to tour the UK and France.
Bill Grady makes his home in the city he loves and cannot live without. However, keep your eyes and ears open for him; he will be coming to your town, and is not to be missed.
The 6412 Ltd. Entertainment/Snakejam Studios
630 9th Avenue, suite 1200 New York, NY 10036 USA 917.554.4952
