A few months ago, Andrew Rose Gregory woke at around 1am in the Brooklyn apartment he shares with his younger brother, Michael. He threw on an Oxford shirt and jacket, took a seat in front of a green screen, sang a few lines about global warming into his brother’s camera, and then went back to sleep.
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Tuned in: Andrew Rose Gregory (top left) moves from YouTube to Is on Thursday night. |
The footage—a total of roughly 25 seconds after edits—is now what Gregory refers to as the “most viewed moment” of his life, the second of a series of music videos dubbed “Auto-Tune The News” created by The Gregory Brothers (a band featuring Andrew, Michael, older brother Evan and his wife, Sarah). In the three months since its release, the second installment of “Auto-Tune The News” was screened on Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show and earned The Gregory Brothers mentions in Time Magazine and a full page in The Village Voice (or, as Feedback calls it, the “C-VILLE of New York”). At press time, more than two million YouTube viewers had watched Andrew duet with Katie Couric about melting polar caps in cyborg hip-hop harmony.
Of the three brothers, however, Andrew Rose Gregory may be the least in need of Auto-Tuning. A Radford native and former Charlottesville resident, Gregory returned during the last few years for gigs with the likes of Devon Sproule and Andy Friedman, as well as for a job as songwriting instructor at the Young Writers Workshop at the University of Virginia. He wraps up his stay in town this Thursday, July 30, when he’ll perform with Sproule at Is. (The last gig with Sproule was a Gregory Brothers show; this solo set, according to Andrew, is “more of a sonic match.”)
“I’m way more of a hired hand,” he said during an interview last week. “‘Auto-Tune The News’ is way more Michael’s project.” Gregory has released swoony, melodic folk records under his own name since 2005, and perfected his pitch through solo albums like 2008’s The Color Red and this year’s family affair, a Meet the Gregory Brothers! EP. More James Taylor, less T-Pain, in short.
Thanks to “Auto-Tune The News,” the Gregory Brothers network is busier than ever. Evan Gregory recently left his job to commit to the brothers’ music career full-time. In June, Andrew released a new EP, titled The Paramedic & Other Songs About Birds, which will be available during his show at Is; next month, he’s back in the studio to record a batch of songs based on a book of the Old Testament. “What better time to go full bore?” asks Gregory once or twice during our chat. All the more reason to tune in at Is on Thursday night.
Mighty Mouse
Songwriter Tom Peloso—a former Hackensaw Boy and current member of Modest Mouse—brings his new band, The Virginia Sheiks, to Dust for a gig on Friday, July 31. Last week, Peloso spoke with Feedback about plans for the show, his recently released EP, making music videos and gardening, among many other things. Read the interview here.
