Off the Grid
Murfreesboro’s Grand Palace: “hip shit for the geographic center of rock ’n’ roll”
by Lee Stabert @stabert
On a hot Tuesday afternoon, Chuck Bruner is making T-shirts in the print shop. A bear of a man with a rough beard, he places American Apparel shirts onto the spider-like silk screen mechanism, runs a wooden press over the screen to impress the paint onto the fabric, spins the giant wheel and begins again. His partner Bingham Barnes and intern/man-about-town Sean Maloney wedge themselves into the cramped, sunny space and talk about music. Maloney shares his feelings on Be Your Own Pet’s new record, beers are offered and upcoming shows are talked up. Later, back in the intimate recording studio, engineer Alex Norfleet ruminates on the bands they would love to book or record in this evolving, idiosyncratic space called Grand Palace. His dog Jeremy drags his bum across the Oriental rug.
There’s no sign on the glass door at 128 1⁄2 Church Street on the square in Murfreesboro, just a poster advertising The Black Diamond Heavies and the Alcohol Stunt Band at this combination venue/print shop/recording studio/record store that lies behind the door and up the stairs. Despite its low profile, some nights you might find yourself packed into the main room, watching anything from a local fave to a national indie rock act or experimental metal. But most days it’s just the odd MTSU student browsing for vinyl and the staff, hard at work transforming this place from private residence and studio to a self-sustaining organism.
Barnes, soft-spoken and affable, is a member of Glossary and a veteran musician and booker on the Murfreesboro scene. Just last April, he moved his silkscreen business into two of the upstairs rooms. The printmaking venture produces T-shirts, posters, show bills, tickets and more for local bands and national acts. The thrust is both environmental and ideological, using 100 percent biodegradable and recyclable solvent and working around band budgets. Barnes and Bruner stay very busy: “We do 75 percent of the design ourselves,” says Barnes, “and sometimes I end up sleeping on the stage across the hall.”
The space fits the people. It’s unassuming yet welcoming, and even the walls have a story to tell—just ask about the bullet holes. Erected in the 1840s, the building was destroyed and then rebuilt in the 1870s. For about five years there’s been a recording studio on the second floor (originally called Church St. Sound) that recorded mostly locals like Glossary and Les Honky More Tonkies. Recently, radical renovations have begun. One room still has decaying drop ceilings and old paint—an artifact of darker days. But after months of work, the main area boasts clean white walls, cathedral ceilings and beautiful historic molding.
In October, the record store opened. Their MySpace page warns, “If you want the latest from Kelly Clarkson, Coldplay or Velvet Revolver, you are shit out of luck. But if you want some Sonny Sharrock or The Sonics, well, then we can talk.” Not much larger than your average bedroom, it’s one of the few places in the ’Boro where you can buy vinyl, local and indie music.
Grand Palace remains both a space and idea in progress. The stage is less than a month old, a phone line was finally put in a few weeks ago, a credit card machine and bathroom door—to replace the curtain—are in the works. But the crown jewel is a vintage recording console that’s just been restored. “With that next step, we’ll be able to compete with any small to mid-sized studio in the area,” says Norfleet. Soon Grand Palace will not just support music, but make it as well.
The live shows are already being recorded, and with the console they can be multitracked, vastly improving the quality. Hopefully, these recordings will be available for download on the Grand Palace website (grandpalace.us) by the fall. When the staff began booking shows, they initially planned on keeping them to one a month but, because of the changing local rock venue landscape, they’ve been pressured into adding more.
It all comes back to sharing the music. The term “music snob” might not be completely inappropriate, but the core principle here is to bring in stuff they like, stuff they believe in, and stuff, like psychedelic metal band Mammatus, that would have nowhere else to get exposure in Murfreesboro. This is a glimpse of the growing revolution in music, with technology enabling people to go off the industry grid to make their own organic, self-supporting communities.
The announced start time for the Heavies show was 9 p.m., but most people seem more interested in hanging out in the print shop (the one room with air conditioning) than getting started on time. But it’s Friday night—who has anyplace better to be? When the Alcohol Stuntband’s Chris Crofton finally takes the stage, he can’t resist waxing philosophic: “You know how you and your friends always talked about having an arts center where you could have a band? I don’t know, do pottery, whatever the fuck you wanted to do, play caps using circles that you painted on the floor yourself? Maybe build a tree house, like Swiss Family Robinson? Well, it’s happening here and it’s really beautiful.”
