by lisa lipsey –
With the release of his first album, All American Boy, in 2015, Steve Grand, an openly gay artist from the Chicago suburbs, carved a place for himself in the music industry and hasn’t looked back. The past three years have seen Grand touring across the world and creating new music. He is now heading back to Southern California with his Pink Champagne Tour.
His SoCal concerts include two nights at Martinis Above Fourth Table + Stage in Hillcrest in San Diego, followed by a date at Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood and two shows at Toucans Tiki Lounge & Cabaret in Palm Springs.
Grand shared a bit about his new show: “I will definitely be playing originals from my latest album, not the end of me, and some familiar covers from Queen, Elton John, The Beatles, George Michael, etc. I have played at Martinis Above Fourth several times. I hang around after and meet whoever wants to say hello to me. We laugh, we cry, have drinks. It’s a great time.”
Not the end of me was released on his own label, Grand Nation LLC, in July 2018. The album includes 12 new tracks, all written and composed by Grand.
“Writing this album was an exercise in catharsis. I’m more unfiltered on this album and explore some of the internal and external challenges I’ve faced over the last few years,” Grand said.
The album’s title track, “not the end of me,” is a song Grand wrote when a long-term relationship was coming to an end. “Breaking up can be long and drawn-out, painful and ugly. This one certainly was,” Grand said. “It was trying and exhausting. This song deals with all of that, as well as the resolution that this is ‘not the end of me.’”
“Singing has always been empowering for me, and being myself, being out, is part of it for me. I could not hide. Songwriters have to be open, honest and vulnerable.”
– steve grand
On being an out and proud artist, Grand said, “I got into music to tell stories from my personal life, including an honest look at the angst of unrequited love, or the pain of a break-up. Singing has always been empowering for me, and being myself, being out, is part of it for me. I could not hide. Songwriters have to be open, honest and vulnerable.”
Grand spent a good chunk of time this summer as a resident artist in Provincetown, Massachusetts and with a slight laugh, he shared an embarrassing moment.
“So in P-Town, I was on piano, singing a song, when I spotted something trapped under one of the speakers. It looked like a wincing, moving bug dying a painful death. I finally told the audience to hang on a second. It turned out to be a stray feather from a drag queen’s boa, wiggling in the breeze of the fan. Everyone must have thought I was on drugs, hallucinating.”
This year Grand accomplished one of his other dreams when he took an ancestral trip to Poland with his family.
“Really, being with my family and connecting with distant relatives was incredible,” he said. “My great-grandmother came to the United States at 14. Life was so hard there, and no one had been back to Poland yet.
“It was so cool to connect with them; they went so above and beyond for us. They live simple, modest lives, and they were gracious hosts,” Grand said. “We couldn’t communicate in words, so there was a lot of just ‘being together.’ They kept trying to get me to play, to sing, and I did finally sing some songs. For my grandmother, I sang America the Beautiful and Halleluiah.”
For now, Grand is figuring which of his newer songs will be turned into a music video next.
“I’ll ask the Martinis audience to weigh in. I hope to keep traveling, living the dream. The traveling musician life has its ups and downs, you have to keep a good attitude and take pride,” Grand said. “I hope people will follow me on social media and come see where I am playing on the website bandsintown.com/stevegrand. You can actually follow all your favorite artists on the Bands in Town website.”
Steve Grand’s Pink Champagne Tour comes to Martinis Above Fourth Table + Stage on Saturday, November 9 and Sunday, November10. Dinner service begins at 5 p.m., show starts at 7 p.m. ma4sd.com