Busy band Green River Ordinance to rock Snowden Grove
The members of the Ft. Worth, Texas, pop-rock band Green River Ordinance have been spending a good bit of time in the Memphis area lately.
They recorded the lion’s share of their major-label debut, Out Of My Hands, here last summer at producer Paul Ebersold’s Seven Four Seven Studios.
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They returned earlier this year for a set at the Beale Street Music Festival. And next week, they share the stage with Collective Soul and Gavin DeGraw for the second entry in Snowden Grove Amphitheater’s Summer Nights $10 concert series.
Despite the frequent trips here, the band has not seen a lot of the area, spending most of the time working, playing bocce ball and gorging themselves on local delicacies.
“We ate a lot of barbecue, and there was this place right by the studio, the Blue Plate Café. We went there a lot,” said Ordinance frontman Josh Jenkins. “Really, the majority of the time is spent in the studio, so you only get to see little parts of Memphis.”
It’s doubtful the band will have any more time for sightseeing when they visit Snowden Grove Thursday. Since the release of Out Of My Handson Capitol/EMI Records in February, the five-piece has been busy crisscrossing the country winning fans for their brand of nakedly emotional, melodic pop music. It’s a sound that has earned them comparisons to the Fray and Matchbox 20.
“We love it,” Jenkins said of the hectic schedule the band has adopted since signing with a major label. “We are so lucky and grateful to play music for a living. And we get to travel, see different cities. We wouldn’t trade that for anything.”
Brothers Jamey (guitar) and Geoff Ice (bass) formed Green River Ordinance when they were barely teenagers. The pair soon brought in Jenkins on vocals, guitar and piano, drummer Denton Hunker and guitarist Joshua Wilkerson. The new band took its distinctive name from a street sign on the wall of their garage rehearsal space.
“It said ‘Green River Ordinance Enforced,’” Jenkins said of the sign, which refers to local laws against door-to-door solicitation. “It kind of sounded Southern. It had the CCR vibe. So they ended up using it. When I joined the band, I was just like, ‘What the heck is this name’? I wasn’t sure if I liked it, but it’s grown on me now.”
Going by GRO for short, the group quickly became a force on the Fort Worth music scene, winning Fort Worth Weekly’s Best New Band award in 2003 and Best Live Band the year after that. They have also twice won Best Band of the Year from the Fort Worth Music Awards.
GRO recorded its first EP in 2005 in their church basement, a clue to the band members’ strong religious faith. But GRO is not a Christian rock band. Their spirituality tends to express itself in more secular, philosophical ways, such as on the title cut to the new record.
“Out Of My Hands is just a recognition that there are a lot of variables that are out of our control,” said Jenkins, who co-writes the group’s music with his bandmates. “There’s a lot of peace in that realization, and it helped us a lot as we were making this record.
Though Out Of My Hands is a big populist record with its sights set on the record charts, Jenkins said the album is true to the band as people and performers.
“It’s a very good introduction,” Jenkins said. “With this album, we wanted to write songs applicable to life and human struggle and the joyous moments and the ones that aren’t so easy and the universal message that we’re all kind of the same.
“We all have our junk and we all have our moments of joy and complete confusion. There’s an underlying hope in our music, hopefully. And when you come to our shows, I think you sense that.”
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