Grammy-winning band the War on Drugs performs at Sound Summit on Oct. 22. (Photo by Shawn Brackbill)
Adam Granduciel, leader of the band the War on Drugs, shot the first video for the group’s latest album, “I Don’t Live Here Anymore,” on the scenic coast of West Marin last year. And now, many months and some 90 shows later, he’ll soon be back in Marin with his bandmates, wrapping up their international tour as the headliners for Sound Summit, the daylong music festival that returns to the 4,000-seat stone amphitheater on Mount Tamalpais for its sixth year on Oct. 22.
“It’s kind of cool for me to come back to where the rollout for the record started,” says Granduciel during a tour stop last week in Athens, Georgia. “We started the process of promoting the album there and Sound Summit is our last show of the year, so it’s kind of full circle.”
That first video, for a moody song called “Living Proof,” was directed by Emmett Malloy, of Stinson Beach, who shot the long-haired Granduciel driving a vintage pickup down dusty country roads and wandering with his guitar on the coastal bluffs of Bolinas and along the foggy shoreline of Tomales Bay, including a scene beside the hulk of the abandoned fishing boat affectionately known as the S.S. Point Reyes.
It was a far cry from his home in Southern California’s congested San Fernando Valley, where the 43-year-old Grammy-winning singer-songwriter lives with actress Krysten Ritter, who starred in the Marvel series “Jessica Jones,” and their 3-year-old son.
“When we were shooting that video, I really fell in love with Stinson,” says Granduciel, who was also smitten by the small-town charm of Point Reyes Station. “It was a surreal weekend in nature. I was like, wow, I just fell in love with the vibe.”
Seventeen years ago, Granduciel formed the band in Philadelphia with collaborator Kurt Vile, who departed for a solo career shortly after the release of the group’s first studio album, “Wagonwheel Blues,” in 2008.
‘Next torchbearer’
After three more albums — “Slave Ambient” in 2011, “Lost in the Dream” in 2014 and “A Deeper Understanding” three years later — a breathless New Yorker article crowned the War on Drugs “the best American ‘rock’ band of this decade” and Granduciel “rock’s next torchbearer.”
For those who know the artistic-minded Granduciel, there would be no need to worry that such high praise would go to his head.
“I didn’t read it, so I don’t know anything about that,” says Granduciel when asked about the piece. “I don’t really sit down and read anything about myself or the band. Why would I do that?”
“A Deeper Understanding,” the band’s first album for major label Atlantic Records, would go on to win best rock album at the 60th annual Grammy Awards in 2018. The band was in New Zealand at the time of the awards show, learning about the win a day later. Once again, Granduciel takes what many believe to be the highest honor the music industry can bestow on an artist with a grain of salt.
“For me, it was like, alright, cool, that’s a fun little thing,” he recalls. “But I didn’t feel like I had finally made it or that it was one of my bucket list items. It was more like, OK that happened. What’s the next thing? What’s the next set of songs?”
Defining moment
As it happens, the next set of songs are on “I Don’t Live Here Anymore,” many of them written during the pandemic. The title track, featuring background vocals by the female pop duo Lucius, takes a nostalgic look back at Granduciel’s first time seeing Bob Dylan perform at the 2002 Newport Folk Festival and dancing to Dylan’s classic “Desolation Row.”
“It was a defining moment in my life,” he says. “I had been deeply obsessed with Dylan’s music for years up to that point and it was the culmination of that energy. At the end of the day, if you’re writing songs there’s no better inspiration than following his lead.”
When he was in his early 20s, Granduciel moved from his native Massachusetts to live in Oakland for what became a formative year in his musical and personal development. He worked in a restaurant in Berkeley and wrote and recorded songs on his own in his off hours. He and a friend with a truck made pilgrimages to Big Sur to do “the Henry Miller thing” and to City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, soaking up the bohemian history of the Bay Area before returning to the East Coast on a train in what was their version of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.”
“It was one of those periods of transformational change for myself and my friends,” he recalls. “It was kind of like a part of my life when I started getting serious about what I truly love to do.”
First time on Tam
But he never made it to Mount Tam, so the Sound Summit show, also featuring the Marin band Wreckless Strangers, Faye Webster and Fruit Bats, will be his first time on a mountain that Native Americans considered a sacred space and that many still think of as the spiritual heart of Marin County. Through its nonprofit, Roots & Branches Conservancy, Sound Summit has raised $250,000 for Mount Tamalpais State Park since 2015.
For Granduciel and band, the show promises to be a healing end to what has been a grueling, challenging tour marred by COVID variants, transit strikes and natural disasters. For example, a pair of concerts in the Carolinas were canceled because of Hurricane Ian. And the band’s Madison Square Garden debut, a major milestone, was hampered by the Omicron variant and a blizzard that paralyzed Manhattan.
“The whole year has been an exhausting time to travel, to do what we do,” he says. “The Mount Tam show is one step closer to being home.”
Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net
IF YOU GO
What: Sound Summit
When: 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Oct. 22
Where: Mountain Theater, Mount Tamalpais State Park
Admission: $120, $65 age 12 and under, free under age 2
Information: soundsummit.net
Originally published at Paul Liberatore