Golden State & Trev
Dragonfly
Hollywood, CA
June 2009
By Victoria Joyce
(SugarBuzz Hollywood)
SugarBuzz Magazine
It’s hard to get us out of the house on a Tuesday. NCIS is on. And Steven Colbert is in Iraq. But Golden State has been Facebooking us and it is impossible to turn down James Grundler. Impossible.
Opening for James’s Golden State is Trev featuring Trevor Lukeather, a second-generation rocker. His dad is Steve Lukather in Toto. (Roseanna, Roseanna!) Trev has a lot of personality; the bright, blonde, long curly haired kind. Surrounded by great musicians; Trev sings and plays lead guitar, excellent keyboards by Evan Hillhouse, Krispy Swiggs plays bass and Jake Hayden on drums with a very loud Old School updated Funk, Blues-Rock approach that bumps and stops and starts back up again. Hell, they even made room for a drum solo. How “1978” is that?
Mr. Trev has a nice voice but not quite the range and didn’t deliver the notes
needed. Stuff on their MySpace page sounds much better. Songs are nice but sounded very similar to each other. In other words; typical “new band” issues. These guys have great teeth, nice smiles and really good musicianship. We’d love to see these guys after a few more gigs.
Running into our old Indie 103.1 friend, Zoe with her pal, Keith on the sa-weet back patio (one of the Dragon Fly’s nicest amenities), we talked bands; local, the world and for all time. Resolved: we all love Golden State.
Nice crowd for a Tuesday and promoter and DJ, Dayle Gloria agreed. We also got some feedback that her new baby, Sunday nights at the Whisky got a big draw and had a very successful debut. Dayle told us, “Mario was knocked out!” Diva D is on a one-woman campaign to bring some vitality back to the Sunset Strip and we could not be more supportive if we sent in the National Guard. “There are a lot of great bands out there and they want to play!” Thank you DG. Really, thank you. We always knew this but it sounds sooooo good coming from you.
As Ms. Gloria played an old Donovan tune, James G sang along as he tuned up. “Superman and Green Lantern ain’t got nothing on me.” Way cute.
Golden State sneaks into their set from sound check you almost don’t notice until the first song is on. There is a 80s like cacophony swirling in the background with slashing guitars (Noah Stone), cymbals (Fern) and bass (Tommy Black) establishing space for Grundler’s voice that is straight from a heavenly choir. With his head towards the sky, James sang “We Must Start Again,” a nice way to open the show. The comparison to Bono is an obvious one but James’s writing is more sophisticated and mysterious so it’s closer to the P Furs in expression. And impossible to ignore.
Golden State’s “All Roads Lead Home” is on the soundtrack of 2008’s Indie film “Henry Poole is Here” for director Mark Pellington. Nice break and a nice song. Sweet film too. Luke Wilson stars. Netflix, my friends.
We missed the other two bands on the bill: Keith Varon & Danger Zone! We have full faith they are excellent bands. Dayle Gloria knows Rock.