The Gracious Few
Members of Live and Candlebox ready for first tour and LP
Jinelle Shengulette
Special to Metromix
September 20, 2010

For The Gracious Few’s first live gig four months ago, drummer Chad Gracey says he and his bandmates had a wicked case of stage fright — a surprise, considering the members of the Pennsylvania-based rock group have been in the spotlight for years.

Gracey, bassist Patrick Dahlheimer and guitarist Chad Taylor were formerly members of the band Live, while singer Kevin Martin and guitarist Sean Hennesy moonlight as members of grunge-rock group Candlebox.

“We were like, ‘Hey let’s do a surprise show like two days from now on a Friday night!’,” recalls Gracey, laughing. “We hadn’t performed the songs too many times, we hadn’t played together in front of an audience ... I haven’t been nervous to play a show like that since probably 1991!”

By the time The Gracious Few make it to Water Street Music Hall on Sunday, Sept. 26, they will have played only nine live shows. But the band members are gearing up — and excited — for their first tour. We talked with Gracey by phone recently, a week before the band’s self-titled debut dropped, about forming the supergroup.

Last year Live called it quits; did you take any time off after the band split, or were you, Taylor and Dahlheimer immediately coming up with new songs?

Chad, Patrick and I had started writing songs before we even knew who was going to be the lead singer for the project. We called (Candlebox singer Kevin Martin), and he came out to York, Pa., in August. We played and wrote a few songs together and immediately called (Candlebox guitarist Sean Hennesy) in as well. And we actually hit the studio to make a record in November.

What were your thoughts and feelings when Live came to an end?

At that point it had become a much-needed break, on a personal level, musical level, artistic level. It was just time for Live to do different things. The three of us wanted to rock a little more, and (Live singer Ed Kowalczyk) wanted to do his thing — and it’s all good.

Had you known Candlebox members Martin and Hennesy before asking them to be in your band?

We’d all run into each other throughout the years playing shows and whatnot. We knew them on an acquaintance level.

(Deciding to call Kevin Martin after Live split) was like an epiphany. It was like, “Oh my God, yes! We gotta call Kevin!” And we knew right from the start, right there.

I hear everyone had a hand in songwriting on The Gracious Few.

Kevin said he wanted to be a part of this project, but he didn’t want the pressure of writing all the lyrics and melodies. So we all pitched in where we could. I’m definitely not a melody or lyric writer, but it just boiled down to, “What word would you put here?” and we’d spout off a word. And we all kind of did it collectively like that.

How did members of two separate bands decide on a sound for a new project?

We knew we wanted to be a little harder than what Live had been doing and even what Candlebox had been doing. Chad Taylor comes up with a lot of the riffs that we start the songs from, and he was just playing this real sort of heavy, bluesy stuff. Once we heard that we were like, “Wow, this is kind of a Led Zeppelin, throwback feel,” and it just sort of happened. We didn’t consciously decide (how we wanted to sound); those were just the songs that started flowing.

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This post has been edited by livefan1999: Sep 21 2010, 12:29 pm