Get your groove on with The Grooveliner’s new album

Collaboration is king for drummer Toby Mechem and guitarist Matt Vianello. After their former bands North of the Quarter and Big Brother Thunder and the Master Blasters disbanded, the 2 based The Grooveliner, a power-funk band that mixes the 2 bands’ unique sounds.

Inspiration to type the group got here from a gathering at The Crow’s Nest with mutual buddy, trumpeter Dave Muser.

Mechem and Vianello stated the band married musicianship with their signature tongue-in-cheek humor to create their third album, “Live From Your Mom’s House.”

“I don’t know how things stick in this band, but we had a member for a while that had a tendency to be late for practice and gigs, and we’d say like, ‘Hey, practice started at seven.’ and his answer was always, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I was at your mom’s house.’ It [became] a thing and then somebody said ‘Live from Your Mom’s House’ would be a great name for the album,” Mechem stated.

Natural collaboration is one thing the 9 piece ensemble strives for, together with throughout the songwriting course of. Every individual within the band will deliver concepts to the desk, and if everybody likes it, they work on bringing it to life.

“If I have an idea, I want to bring it in and see where it goes with everybody else,” Vianello stated. “That’s one of the things that I like. I’m never going to come up with a fully formed song with all the parts that’s going to be worth anything. I know that [because] I’ve tried. I need the other people in the band to add their little parts because I don’t have the ability to hear it fully formed.”

The addition of lead vocalist Ryan Stewart to the band was one other results of collaboration. The group wrote a music throughout the COVID-19 pandemic that Mechem stated would profit from a robust lead vocal. They reached out to Stewart to document it, and Vianello stated Stewart added a dynamic to the band that was simple.

“He’s a great front man, and the rest of us are not,” Vianello joked. “He adds a visual dynamic to the band for our live performances, which is great. He gets the crowd involved, and then during the music writing process, he also is great with coming up with little random melody lines that allow us to to think about the song in a way that we wouldn’t have thought about.”

The band’s infusion of humor into their music is necessary to what they hope audiences take away from a Grooveliner present, stated Mechem.

“I think the people who like the music are the people that want to have fun and want to dance,” he stated. “There’s lots of things they could be doing, so we want them to have a good time when they come to hear The Grooveliner.”

Mechem added that he hopes their music helps audiences acknowledge that St. Louis has nice unique acts.

“I think St. Louis is an amazing music town, an underrated music town,” he stated. “We’re going through some tough times now with the magazines and the newspapers we’ve lost, [and] the radio we’ve lost. I feel like we’ve got these embers burning, and we’re going to be great again. We’re just in a period where — nothing against it — but people like to go hear cover bands [and] they like to hear tribute bands. I just hope that there’s enough people who like original music so that we can keep putting it out.”

To hear extra about The Grooveliner’s album “Live From Your Mom’s House” take heed to “St. Louis on the Air” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or click on the play button beneath.

“St. Louis on the Air” brings you the tales of St. Louis and the individuals who dwell, work and create in our area. This program was co-produced by Miya Norfleet and Darrious Varner. This present is produced by Miya Norfleet , Emily Woodbury, Danny Wicentowski, Elaine Cha and Alex Heuer. Layla Halilbasic is our manufacturing assistant. The audio engineer is Aaron Doerr.

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