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here's a poster of Otis Redding,
sweaty and screaming and on his
knees, available on the Internet for a
dollar from artist Jason Lazarus; two
words are scribbled in red over the black-and-
white image: "Try Harder." It's an inspirational
message and especially important to bear in
mind as a musician playing in a genre—rock
music—that is mostly designed to look natu
ral. Many lead singers risk forgetting they're
on a stage in their effort to look cool.
Chloe Tewksbury, lead vocalist and guitarist
for Green Thrift Grocery, strikes a perfect bal
ance: you can tell she's putting effort into her
performance, but it never looks anything less
than real. Leading her band through scrappy,
verging-on-chaos, art-punk songs, she hollers,
jokes, dances, shrieks, croons and bangs away
on her electrified acoustic guitar. In short, she
does what a frontperson is supposed to do:
she actually engages the audience.
The band formed upon drummer Dain Marx
(formerly of self-proclaimed "evil gay space
clowns" Zumm Zumm) and bassist Hana Hay's
return to Athens this past Halloween after
an extended stay in Portland. A reoccurring
theme for Green Thrift Grocery is a certain
proclivity lor the spontaneous: Dain and Hana
were traveling with the Portland-based indie-
pop band Foot Ox, but after a weekend ;un-
ning around Athens during the late-October
Next to Last Festival, they decided to let their
band soldier on while they remained.
"To me, the whole Portland thing seemed
surreal in a sense—like it wasn't real life,"
recalls Marx. "It was way too safe—it's a
completely different world out there, and I
missed the South. I just wanted to get back
here for a little bit, not [with] much inten
tion of staying." The pair ended up crashing
with Tewksbury at her home in Arnoldsville,
where along with guitarist Ryan Donegan, the
group began to navigate its way through some
punky improvisation. The band shaped it$
improv into some truly catchy songs, whipped
up some stylish, elven/sci-fi-themed outfits
and started playing out.
The colorful quartet is poised to contrib
ute to what is basically Athens' legacy: the
collision of art and fun. The latter comes up
often while talking to the band. "I guess the
fact that we have a dynamic and entertain
ing frontperson takes the pressure off of
me; it allows me to have a good time while
doing what I'm doing," says Donegan, whom
audiences may have previously spotted ring
ing bells and coaxing tones from singing saws
with The Music Tapes. "It's really fun; I just
started playing bass when we started jamming
together. I like playing and getting better at
it and learning," says Hay, who also contrib
utes video-making skills to the group. (Take
note of her stop-motion clip for "My My My
My.")
Beyond the simple joys of noisemaking,
Tewksbury's subtle jabs at consumer culture
are a large part of what makes the band so
interesting; her sense of conviction may
be the source of her electric performances.
Although Green Thrift Grocery nicked its name
from a Flagpole article about a fictitious pro
duce store as a goof, there are genuine ideas
being discussed in the songs. "It kinda turned
into this opportunity to create some kind of
commentary on the strange consumer environ
ment we live in," Tewksbury says, "which I
think permeates a lot of levels of conscious
ness and creates who we are in a lot of ways.
"it is a set of characters in a way," she
adds, referring to her band's costumed per
sonas. "They're not defined characters, but
his tongue cheek thing where I feel
like it's turning up the volume on that part
of us: the way that we just take on all these
different roles, and we're forced in all these
different directions with all these different
messages we get through media and the way
we experience culture... And it turned us into
these twisted kind of beings," she says, laugh
ing, "where we don't know who we are, and
everything's in conflict. And the costumes are
fun—we do it because it's fun to do, but it's
also a way of taking our stage show out of
the context of the ordinary person. I mean,
everybody wears costumes to some degree in
their normal life that can be changed... and
you can change who you are and how you're
perceived by what you're wearing. That plays
into it to a certain degree."
Jeff Tobias
/ v
WHO: Green Thrifty Grocery, Dead Dog,
Nucular Animals
WHERE: Farm 255
WHEN: Wednesday, July 13,11 p.m.
HOW MUCH: FREE!
V )
14 FLAGPOLE.COM JULY 13,2011
