Matthew Grimm, Earth and Fire (but not Wind), Tyler Durden, Che Guevara, Dave Stengel, D.Lee, Big Bill Haywood, Bill Neff, the Guy Under the Seats, Johnny Tightlips, Jason Berge, John of Patmos, Mick Hargreaves, Donovan McNabb, DK, Jason Lewis, James Robinson, Baldwin IX of Flanders, the Pseudo-Baldwin, Matt Winegardner, Pornstar Raylene, Pipefitters Local 302, cymbal-banging monkey, Eric Straumanis, Milhouse's Dad, Bender, Big Chief Lumberg, Arnoldo di Brescia, Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David, Randall Davis, Ryan Theriot, Azlea Antistia, Hugh Thompson, Matt Azzarto, Smedley Butler, David Henderson, Tom Tolbert, Jeff Sale, V.
Influences
booze, Social Distortion, Bill Hicks, Henry Agard Wallace, Bender, Herbert Marcuse, Robert Penn Warren, John Sayles, Dave Alvin, Jason & the Scorchers, Cornel West, Scruffy the Cat, Jonathan Kwitney, Chomsky, Farscape, MC5, Phil Spector, that dog on the corner who tells us to do things, Salvador Allende, The Del Fuegos, pornography, Alan Moore, Sidney Lumet, David Fincher, Letters to Cleo, Tariq Ali, Siddhartha Gautama, Tuuli, Joss Whedon, anger.
"If you haven't heard of Matthew Grimm and The Red Smear, you're missing a great band, sort of a cross between the Clash and Wilco. They're Iowa's best rock'n'roll band -- intense, melodic and political . . ."DOWN WITH TYRANNY
"Me, Im gonna play the hell outta this stuff, stick it on mix CDs, blast it on my radio program, rock the tavern on my weekly DJ night and force every hard-working, beer-guzzling, non-voting dumbass friend I have to listen to every word of it. Until I hear stuff like this rammed down my ear-holes as fervently and repetitively as I currently do patriotic pabulum like Toby Keith, Pat Robertson and Bill O Fing Reilly, Ill consider it my duty as a proud, practicing, rock n roll preachin American . . ." Pulse of the Twin Cities
Matthew Grimm is an award-winning journalist and journeyman rock musician best known as a pioneer of New York’s roots rock scene and still renowned in some sub-strata of the music world for disarmingly melodic proletarian anthems and iconoclastic rave-ups. Grimm currently fronts the band the Red Smear based in Iowa City, IA, a city that has reputedly blacklisted him from public performances, and the band released its second record, The Ghost of Rock & Roll, in May of 2009.
Grimm burst onto the New York rock scene sometime in the mid-1990s — as much as one can "burst" while playing vaguely hillbillyesque rock in succession of crappy East Village starter clubs. He and his band, The Hangdogs, morphed into a raucous roots rock outfit, melding punk-rock-ish live energy and volumes with the Grimm's alternately somber or funny lyrics and melodies. Within a few years, The Hangdogs had become New York's preeminent entrant into the roots rock/alternative country wave then threatening to become an American music genre. Establishing themselves as mainstays at the city’s long-running mecca for American roots music, The Rodeo Bar, the band became a Gotham institution, cited as one of the city’s attractions in no less than The New Yorker, even mentioned as a runner-up in an MSNBC.com story determining the “best bar-band in America.” As the respected New York music blog LucidCulture summarized on the occasion of a 2008 Hangdogs Rodeo Bar reunion: “For a substantial chunk of time in the late 90s and early zeros, there was no better New York band than the Hangdogs. Watching them evolve from overamped, politically incorrect honkytonkers to a magnificent, lyrically-charged Americana rock unit with a national following was one of the most satisfying things a concertgoer here could have witnessed — and countless did.”
Steadily, however, family and dayjob priorities winnowed the band’s original line-up away, eventually leaving Grimm the only original Hangdog touring with the band. Along the way, he honed his sound, losing much of the twang, sharpening his populist lyrics into a distinctly, often fervently progressive political voice and pushing the band’s sonic ethos more towards something verging on punk and powerpop. Grimm’s own family issues led him back to his native Iowa in early 2004. The next year he went to Southern California to make his first ostensible solo record, Dawn’s Early Apocalypse, produced by his manager, major label A&R veteran Peter Lubin, and multiplatinum producer and guitar great Pete Anderson. Of the record, released in the spring of 2006, The Pulse of the Twin Cities would aver, “Like the venerable yarn spinners who share his last name, Matthew Grimm utilizes common, everyday situations to bolster the effectiveness of his personal tales of terror and injustice in a world that’s already become horrific enough to no longer need fairy tales.” Grimm put together rotation of musicians both from Iowa City’s dynamic music community and former Hangdogs from the New York metro area, called it the Red Smear, and began touring from coast to coast, and to quite near the point of financial exhaustion.
Grimm and the Smear in 2008 reunited with a compatriot of his New York days, Jason T. Lewis, former frontman of Star City, relocated to Iowa City for the University of Iowa’s prestigious Writer’s Workshop. Lewis built a home studio to professional caliber, dubbing it Sad Iron Studio, where he, Grimm and the Red Smear made their follow-up album. The fruit of their collaboration, The Ghost of Rock & Roll, will be released in the May 2009 by Grimm and Iowa City’s own Mud Dauber Records, likely to the meager sales that have long been a hallmark of Grimm's career as the notion of rock & roll has been sold off to three soulless douchebags in suits who have deftly applied their MBAs to the music business in the same way enterprising denizens of the financial industry used theirs to help bolster America and make everything swell for everyone.
"When it comes to using lyrics and Web-site writings to take on right-wing politicians, the religious right, the mainstream media and others who raise his ire, Grimm has few peers. Smart and literate (a dangerous combination), Grimm also knows how to rock and twang with abandon -- an even more dangerous combination." San Antonio Express-News
"Those who like their rock n roll pretty and polite should avoid Matthew Grimm & the Red Smear, as wanton a band of aural barbarians as ever assaulted a soundboard . . . That [Grimm] couples his populist protests with a slashing wit makes it all the more imperative that the tracks on Dawns Early Apocalypse find a wider audience."Playback:StL
WHO WE'D LIKE TO DRINK WITH: Revolutionaries, dissidents, the defiant, the disenfranchised, the put-upon, downsized and mortgaged, union fucks, non-union fucks who need a union, freedom fighters, Jon Stewart, Bill Hicks, anybody who wants to meet Bill Hicks, Matt Groening, Subcomandante Marcos, Chavez, Lula, Evo, Ness, Feingold, Janine Lindemulder, Raylene, Rita Faltoyano, sluts, whores, strippers, subs, doms, earthbound angels, losers, dweebs, drunks, freaks, wretched refuse, tempest-tossed, Grangers, Wobblies, anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, non-doctrinaire socialists, non-DLC Democrats, social economists, social pariahs, the beshitted and addled children of the MTV, Rachael Leigh Cook, Jessie Fuckin Klein, all the rest of the handful of people on this spinning hunk of dirt who don't think what they're told, anyone who thinks what they're told starting to feel the fist up their ass.
". . . the hardest hitting leftfielder this side of Manny Ramirez."Iowa City Press-Citizen
SNOTTY, SELF-IMPORTANT ADMONITION BEFORE YOU PRESS THE ADD BUTTON: We will most likely add you. If you're a band, we'll add you if we like your shit.
Matthew Grimm & the Red Smear's Friend Space (Top 16)
Good news. It wasn't broken, just a sprain. Its all bruised up today but he'll be fine. :) Maybe i'll get to see you play someday....lol but it was good to talk to you again. Hope the rest of your weekend is good. Laters.
Great show last night! Only song I wanted to hear but didnt get played was Anacostia, but that's understandable. Hopefully you'll be back around in the next few years..
"It is better to die on your feet than to live a lifetime on your knees. " -Emiliano Zapata Thank you for your friendship, and keep fighting the good fight.
One Twenty Oh Nine is wonderful. Looking forward to the new CD. Going to go pay my .99 now to get the track.
Gas prices are low. You must tour before it shoots through the roof once again. What, a snow and rain tour not sounding too attractive?
In the meantime, if you do end up in the Bay Area again, I can be counted on to put you and your ragtag set of musicians up for the night in the manner they're accustomed to.
Roy
P.S. Hope they untangle that mess of legal entanglements that is The Watchmen soon.
Matthew, Hello, and thanks for the "Add". So, I was on CDBaby last week listening to random musicians and stumbled on to your page. I bought a copy of Dawn's Early Apocalypse. It is amazing work. You sure know how to write some great hooks on the guitar and vocally. If you get signed and/or do any shows in southwestern PA, I'll be sure to check it. Did you ever sneak a copy of the album into Mike Ness' mailbox? Ha ha. It's just a suggestion! Oh, I did have a real question. Are the uncredited/hidden tracks of "Fuck, Fuck, Fuck" at the end of the disc alternate takes or variations? Just curious! Well,enjoy my money, and I will enjoy the songs. Ha ha ha.
met Jim Weatherly at a songwriting workshop last night, he was playing different recordings of Midnight Train to Georgia and closed it out with the Dogs version.
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