Seattle band Great Grandpa are a Rolling Stone Artist You Need to Know. (From left: Pat Goodwin, Alex Menne, Carrie Goodwin, Dylan Hanwright, and Cam LaFlam.)
Chona KasingerWhen Pat Goodwin brought an acoustic guitar onstage at a sold-out Great Grandpa show in Brooklyn this past fall, one audience member responded by shouting “Free Bird!”
“I wish we fucking played ‘Free Bird!’” Goodwin told the crowd.
“I really don’t,” said lead singer/bassist Alex Menne.
Acoustic guitars are still somewhat of a novelty at Great Grandpa shows. The quintet, which formed in Seattle in 2014, have spent the past few years expanding upon, if not quite discarding, their early grunge-garage associations. With Four of Arrows, their remarkable second studio album, they deepen the four-chord feedback-pop of their 2017 debut, Plastic Cough, into a more contemplative, textured folk-rock in the vein of artists like Big Thief and (Sandy) Alex G.
“I think we felt obliged to operate within this paradigm: This is who we are, we’re a garage rock band, we play in basements and we have loud amps,” Goodwin says. “But suddenly, once that happened, it was like ‘Well, this is our real band, and now we have this platform. What do we actually want to make?’”
The band, comprising Goodwin, Menne, Cam LaFlam on drums, Dylan Hanwright on guitar, and Carrie Goodwin (currently on touring hiatus as she finishes school) on bass, worked hard on Four of Arrows, often building out songs with multiple distinct parts and melodic structures. The foursome spent the majority of a recent interview after their show in Brooklyn dissecting the intricacies of that process: explaining how fragments of verses and bridges from various voice memos ended up getting rejiggered and combined into the 11 songs that make up the album.
“It was like one of those YouTube videos where someone is painting something, and you’re not sure what they’re painting,” Hanwright says of the recording process with producer Mike Davis. “And they’re rotating the canvas and you’re like, ‘What the hell is happening?’ and then all of a sudden they rotate the canvas just right, and the painting is done, and all of a sudden the vision becomes clear, and it’s like, ‘Whoa.’”
Part of what further distinguishes and complicates Great Grandpa’s working process is that each band member contributes lyrics to Menne, who then interprets the songs as the group’s frontperson. Before that happens, there are extensive conversations about each song’s meaning and inspiration; the process of internalizing another person’s narrative can be intense.
“It’s emotionally challenging, but also emotionally very rewarding,” says Menne. “There’s a total lack of self-consciousness, where you’re like, okay, I can see this song for what it is instead of being like, ‘Does this thing that I made myself suck?’ But it is also really challenging just to get into that headspace. For this album, I was allotted a very safe space to just do what I needed to do to get into the zone. There was a lot of crying in dark rooms in the studio.”
The first show Great Grandpa ever played was Halloween 2014, at a friend’s house where several bandmates had previously lived in in Seattle. The band was supposed to be a side project: Hanwright and Pat Goodwin had been in another band they describe as “loud, noisy” and “overwrought,” while Menne had been playing “annoying sad folk music in my bedroom.”
Great Grandpa was something different. Early songs like “Cheeto Lust” and “Mostly Here” were unadorned, hook-filled, lo-fi power-punk. “It felt so refreshing to play in a band where you could come to the practice space and everyone could learn the song in one day,” says Hanwright. ”Just simple pop music. It felt like this breath of fresh air.”
But after releasing Plastic Cough (with its irresistibly catchy single “Teen Challenge”), the band quickly grew wary of being tagged with contrived labels like “bubblegum grunge.” “I hate that phrase so much,” says Menne. “I literally despise it…I know people who use it to describe themselves, and that’s totally cool. But I just feel like when it’s that rock critic voice using it, it seems very condescending — like, ‘Oh, your voice sounds like a lady.’”
“We’ve never subscribed to grunge, but we’ve gotten that label our entire existence,” says Goodwin. “I’m convinced it’s only because we’re a rock band from Seattle.”
“Well, we did label ourselves ‘grunge-pop snack-rock’ for a while,” adds Menne.
Within moments, the band steers this heightened conversation about labels and genre into something more up their alley: “AC/VC”, one of their favorite YouTube mashup videos, which merges Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles” and AC/DC’s “Back in Black.” (“We used it once as our walkout song,” says Goodwin).
Several of the best new songs on Four of Arrows (“Treat Jar,” “Bloom”) began, it turns out, with Pat Goodwin making up placeholder lyrics about his family’s late dog Wilson. “I remember sitting with a guitar, just singing to him,” Goodwin says. “The original fake lyric was, ‘Wilson looked at me/He said, take me to the treat jar/Take me to the treat jar/Won’t you please.’ He would look at you, and then he’d look at the treat jar, and then he’d look at you again.’”
“Classic dog stuff,” says Menne.
Eventually, Hanwright reworked “Treat Jar” into a moving pop-punk anthem about the crushing demands of working service jobs. “Bloom,” meanwhile, which features the instant-classic opening lines, “I get anxious on the weekends/When I feel I’m wasting time/But then I think about Tom Petty/And how he wrote his best songs when he was 39,” also began as a song about Willie (“He’s a good boy on the weekend,” etc.).
“All the songs are secretly about Pat’s dog,” jokes Menne. Goodwin came up with the Petty line later on, as a lark, before recording a rough demo. He wrote the song’s semi-nonsensical chorus — “Step into whatever you want to/And let your spirit bloom” — simply because he loved the way the words sounded. (Afterwards, he sent the chorus to his friend Isaacc Reiger of the band Strange Ranger with the note, “Yo I know you like Third Eye Blind; Do you like this chorus?”)
As the band moves forward with Four of Arrows, they’ll continue figuring out how to break out acoustic guitars without “Free Bird” heckling at future shows. “We’ve definitely had conversations about wanting to break out of the emo world, so to speak,” says Menne, “and gear more towards the, I don’t know what you would call…”
“Adult contemporary?” says Goodwin.
“Indie alternative,” Menne says with faux-seriousness.
“It’s less trying to fit into a world, and more just getting out of a constraint of playing only with loud, all-dude emo bands,” says Hanwright. “It’s more about a world where we can do our own thing and just be ourselves.”
“Step into whatever we want to?” says Menne.
“And let our spirit bloom?” says Goodwin.
“Damn,” says Hanwright.
“Damn,” says LaFlam.
“I feel hella motivated now,” says Goodwin.
ON THE RISE
When it comes to music, there's a difference between hearing it, listening to it and feeling it. For the new album from producer, film scorer and songwriter SIXFOOT 5 titled BODY EROTICA, there’s some contrasting reactions he wants people to feel with it: disturbed or energized. For him, the music is made for more than just hearing and listening, it’s made for experiencing.
BODY EROTICA is built to evoke the feelings of being in the club at night with a surprising final track that concludes the narrative of the album. While genre labels are being phased out more and more these days, SIXFOOT 5’s BODY EROTICA is electronic music with pop techniques but in his words, “incidental music” is a more fitting classification.
“When you hear the music in a thriller film, the musical memory in your brain can get the same feeling from other music. By combining that with electronic music, you get incidental music that creates a whole world within the song.” he said.
SIXFOOT 5, real name Carson Rammelt, built the album on what he calls “cinematic soundscapes.” With his background in film scoring and a love for film, it was only right to translate aspects from both of those worlds into the album.
“Once I was exposed to film scores, I fell in love with it and that exposed me to different genres of films. As time went on, I was actually given the opportunity to score three films myself.” he said.
The seven track album was born from the sounds, emotions and experiences of the New York nightlife scene but was created states away in Florida. After coming out of a creative funk, Carson crafted something that represented home for him that came to him when he needed it most.
“I was house sitting for a friend in January of this year after my 2024 ended not so well. I was feeling lost, aimless and just frustrated. Being in that peaceful environment of stillness awoke my creativity.” he said.
Carson continued by reflecting on how things in life can go in seemingly opposite directions at the exact same time.
“During this time I also was thinking about March 2020 when my horoscope said ‘You never know what’s going to happen. You never know when inspiration will strike.’ During that time, things weren’t in the best place for me. Then, just after that, I collaborated with an artist and our song went relatively viral - then COVID happened.” he said.
This reflection led to something positive which was the spark he needed to put himself in a place where he could find what he was looking for.
“Fast forward to January 2025, I’m still thinking about that horoscope. I found myself in the same place mentally so I just got in front of the keyboard and then it was like I opened a portal. And once I started, I just couldn't stop. I didn’t know where it was going - but I knew what I was doing. The ideas just kept flowing out of me as I got more and more ideas for different songs.” he said.
With the title BODY EROTICA, the sexual energy of the album is at the forefront but it’s done through a creative and immersive lens. Various production elements like pulses, kick drums, droning sounds, dark melodies, distortion and even some original sounds from Carson’s own mouth all came together to paint auditory pictures. These pictures include scenes of lights glowing in a dark room, sweaty bodies dancing and people making decisions they might regret in the morning.
“When I make music, I want to paint pictures. I want the listener to have a multi-medium experience. It’s not just something they listen to - it’s a world to get immersed in. When I start working on music, I see my software as a blank canvas. And as I’m adding more musical elements, I’m painting the picture I see in my mind. It all comes from my third eye and my imagination.” he said.
While the first six tracks of BODY EROTICA are a unified sensory experience of a dark underworld, the final track, “Kontakt,” offers a direct contrast to it all. It serves as a moment of release for the listener, an exhale after the intense sonic palettes they just experienced.
“The entire album is a journey and at the end you reach a moment of euphoria. The melodies and chords are all at the forefront once you reach the final song.” he said.
Creating a multi-medium experience is something SIXFOOT 5 brought to life with the album release party for BODY EROTICA. In a room full of projectors, lights and visualizers, he created the experience the music was supposed to evoke even without those enhancements. The album listening party was designed to push people into the realm where they could just let the music be absorbed and respond to it accordingly.
“I utilized the cinematic soundscapes to enhance whatever emotional response people had to the music. Whether it was mental, physical or a combination of both, I just wanted them to act on it as they were hearing the music and seeing everything happening around them.” he said
BODY EROTICA is an album that serves as a homage to Carson’s past experiences in the nightlife club scene but there's one key difference between where he was then and where he is now: sobriety. While speaking with him, he shared that he couldn’t have made this album if he hadn’t gone sober.
“When I was in the clubs before my sobriety, I partook and indulged in multiple different things. I was still making music throughout all that. But as I was getting older, I realized I just didn’t want to keep going on like that. Then, when I started my sobriety, I wondered if I would be able to still be inspired musically.” he said.
Carson’s sobriety turned out to be one of the best decisions he ever made. The choice to go down this path worked out for him in multiple ways.
“I actually got a large-scale job opportunity to score a feature length film that I wouldn’t have been able to handle without my sobriety. For this album, when the inspiration struck me, the ideas just kept pouring out of me over the course of six days and I realized I didn’t need to be under the influence to be inspired. Inspiration will come when it’s supposed to.” he said.
Carson also spoke on how sobriety has reshaped how he experiences music and the club as both an artist and attendee in the environment.
“Even when I go to clubs now, the music just sounds different to me. I remember everything I experienced and heard vividly and I can implement those elements into my music with ease. Of course, I still get inspiration from my past too but when I experience things now, I’m an observer.“ he said.
SIXFOOT 5’s love for movies and music runs through everything he does. From his actual film scoring for independent movies like Into The Bloo, Life of Riley and Lady Like to the cinematic soundscapes of BODY EROTICA, it’s clear that he showcases his love for his passions through his art. Just like a timeless movie, the music is meant to go beyond the physical senses and reach something deeper within.
BODY EROTICA is available on streaming services now.
You can experience more cinematic soundscapes with SIXFOOT 5 by following him on these platforms:
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