Welcome to The Fulton Girls Club
Fulton Girls Club has released its debut album Teeth and Air and every case will be handmade and numbered. But just who is behind this little known female club? Is it the love child of several talented ladies as the name might suggest or is it merely the project of a mysterious gentleman?
After some attempted digging around FGC’s myspace and the greater internet for scattered biographical details and the like, The Dwarf was none the wiser so decided to go straight to the source to painfully extract all the sorted facts regarding the life and times of FGC.
The club has one member who goes by the name of Grant Jonathon Gronewold. When I ask what instrument Gronewold plays he curiously replies “I play anything. I want to learn the cello. I dragged a bow across my friends once and I sang a song about how my cousin doesn't like queers, but I didn't have a tape recorder so you'll never hear it.”
Then I make another general enquiry about how FGC formed (which may have been a stupid enquiry in hindsight, but I didn’t know there was only one member when the interview began!) “Chuck lent me a guitar and I figured out how to use this really old recording program.” I’m left perplexed and confused as to who this Chuck character is but hey, I’m convinced he did the world a favour by lending Gronewold a guitar.
Next up I hit him with another incredibly basic question. What’s the significance of the FGC name? “I just like the way it sounds…it looks really good stuck to a wall with plastic letters.”
So then I made the mistake of asking Gronewold why there is so little information disclosed about FGC, especially on its myspace. The answer is…well…highly convoluted to say the least, but it is very informative and definitely detailed! Here’s an extract for your own reading pleasure.
“I figure people don’t want to know much, but my mum says I'm out of touch and impractical sometimes. So I was born in a small town near Chicago and then I moved to another small town near Chicago, all the dogs were ugly there and all you had to do (to entertain yourself) was to stomp in the mud and beat your wrists on your head…I have cystic fibrosis and spend a lot of time in hospital, but I sneak down and play the church organ sometimes. I started taking poetry seriously during my last hospital stay when I had a real goddamned flood of thoughts and wrote them all down.”
I’m not entirely sorry I asked about the lack of information regarding FGC on the internet because I do quite enjoy the thought of someone pondering over “the invention of and purpose of bone china.”
Back to the point Gronewold’s music “sounds like falling out of tree and then showing everybody in town the bruise on your stomach.” His first full-length record took around 5 months to write and produce. Teeth and Air is self produced to the point where Gronewold sells and makes the cases himself. The record’s main means of distribution is via direct contact with FGC, so for all you music enthusiasts just hit FGC’s myspace for further contact details. However, there are plans for the record to be distributed on the Shriek Sounds label.
After finishing the icing on the Teeth and Air cake, Gronewold promptly turned his attention to record number two. There was a period of détente between records that lasted for at least an hour. “I wrote and recorded the first song for the next record (after) I finished ordering the tracks on the first record.”
Now to wind this bizarrely twisted article to an end, I shall leave you with Gronewold’s parting words in relation to the possibility of hitting the road and playing some dates. Have a giggle if you will…
“I can't even afford to take trains to the city that's how people like Al Capone and John Dillinger start isn't it?”
