Gary Grochla

Bass Player/Singer

Interview

 K: Hi Gary, thanks for agreeing to get involved.  Can you tell me how you started in music?

G:  I lived in Glasgow but moved to East Kilbride for a while and started playing in the orchestra pit of theatres.  That got me into acting as well and very soon I got my Equity Card and got into some one act plays.

K:  Was it always bass or were there other instruments that you played?

G:  It was always bass.  I started playing when I was 14.  I chose bass because the 2 mates I started playing with already had guitars.  Of the 3 of us, I was the only one that kept it up and that was the early 80’s.  BY the 90’s I started playing and meeting up with the Glasgow bands which are well known now.  Del Amitri, Belle and Sebastian, The Kevin McDermot Orchestra, Greg Kane from Hue & Cry.  The Halt Bar in Woodlands Road is where we all used to meet up and that’s where I met and became very good friends with Helen Reeves and I played in her band for 20 years.  There was a huge music scene in the city back then.  I was also asked if I’d be interested in playing with The Proclaimers.  There are still opportunities coming in from the bands of that era and I was asked to tour with The Simple Minds earlier this year but obviously Covid has put a halt to the live gigs at the moment.

K:  So, you keep those contacts alive.  How do you keep in touch with all these guys?

G: One of the best things that kept the contacts growing were the Bass Bashes I used to attend.  They were set up by ACG Guitars and were initially based in Moffat.  Basically, a whole weekend dedicated to Bass guitar with loads of great contacts, events and product showcases. I met people like Dave Swift who plays with Jools Holland and met a load of other big names in the bass world so that was a great way of keeping in touch.

I didn’t get much work out of it, but it was a great way to spend a weekend and there were some quite famous players every now and then who would do workshops that were interesting. 

You would take your equipment with you and we would go up for a jam as part of the event.  ACG custom build guitars and basses and they organised the bass bashes all over the UK.  It was good to have on in Scotland.  Unfortunately, it started to get difficult to get enough people to fill it in Scotland and it started getting more expensive. 

They still have the big London show but that’s more of a trade show.  Hopefully they’ll start them back up here. 

K: So, these guys you played with back then,  was that live gigs or did you record as well?

G:  Yes, recording as well.  I’ve kept all the stuff I did back then.  There were five albums with Belle & Sebastian, and the soundtrack from Stuart’s film, I played on that as well.  (Laughs) I acted in that as well.

K:  Stuart?

G:  Stuart Murdoch.  He produced a film called “God Help The Girl”.  It was Hannah Murray from Game of Thrones, Emily Browning from American Gods and loads of other great actors.  IT was a cracking cast and I played the Café owner in it.

That was only about 3 or 4 years ago so quite recent.

K:  When did you start getting in the Blues?

G: That didn’t really happen until the 90’s when I started playing with the Louis Wallace Chain.  We did well and had a lot of quite big gigs.  The gigs were organised by wee John McLaughlin who now writes songs for Rod Stewart and Westlife and the likes.  He had a studio called The Hit Factory.

It was also about the same time that Al Fleming and Jim Kielt started up the Tuesday night Blues Jam at The State Bar.  When they started that up, I used to go along and got to know a lot of the Blues players.  Up until that time it was never a genre I was into.  I thought it was music for the “older man” but then I realised I was an older man and I started to enjoy it more.  That’s were I go to meet people like Deke McGee and Al Brown.

K: It really was, and barring the  Covid restrictions, still is quite a launchpad for musicians all over Glasgow.  I often wonder what the Blues scene would have been like in Glasgow now if that weekly jam hadn’t started up.  It wasn’t just about the music; it started a community.

G:  And roughly about that time I met Jim Ward and you know all about that because that’s when we played in the same band…”The Magic Blues Surfers”.

K: Oh yes, I remember it well.  Awesome band, awesome times

G:  It was.  That’s was where I got known as a blues player and then I went on to play in the band Killing Floor for another 2 years.  I played with Big Bill and Phil and Tony Sauvé on drums.  He was an amazing session drummer.

K:  And while you were building your reputation in the Blues you were still following other musical paths as well, is that right?

G:  Yes, it was about that same time that I started playing with Terry Neeson.  Playing the Glasgow Theatres and the Glasgow Mayfest shows.  Terry was and still is amazingly popular in Scotland.   It was all big gigs with Terry, and I got really into that. 

One of the best things about Terry is that she would never do anything on the cheap.  Every gig, every member of the band was on MU rates.  She was the fairest person I ever met on the music scene.  That’s why she always ended up getting funded for all the gigs.  Either from the council or Mayfest or some other body, but she always pulled the crowds, so she deserved it.  She was the biggest selling artist in Mayfest when we played the Fruitmarket.  It was sold out for about a week.  She’s still popular now.

I loved that I could get the Double Bass out for those gigs.  There are a few videos on YouTube of that.  It was the first time I ever played Double Bass unaccompanied with a voice.  That was about 2 years ago, it was just a nice piece of music.  Stephen Caban was playing that gig as well which was a real pleasure to hear.  People tend to forget that he is a brilliant player as well as having kept the music shop CC Music going for 40 years.

K:  Yeah, Steve is some player.  I saw them at the Kelvingrove Bandstand with his Country band.  There were about 8 of them on stage and they were absolutely phenomenal.  Great players, all of them.

You played and continue to play Jazz. Any memorable gigs in that genre?

G: One session does spring to mind and it was with Martin Taylor.

K: The Martin Taylor?

G; Well, yeah. It was the early 90’s, and Moira Kerr had booked me for a session, I was more than a bit star struck when I found out Martin Taylor was the guitarist, I think the songs ended up on two albums!

K: He’s a bit of a legend now.

G: Chris Evans had Jeff Beck on his show a few years ago, and asked him who his favourite guitarist was! He said Martin Taylor and Chris had him on his show the next day, and suddenly he found a huge new audience!

But I still love the blues and have kept on playing with some of the cream of the Glasgow Blues players.  People like Al Brown. I got Al a gig in the Kelvingrove Bandstand coincidentally.  Again, from contacts made in previous musical activities.  I knew Warren McIntyre from playing in the Starry Skies album.

K:  What was the Starry Skies album?

G:  It was Warren McIntyre’s band.  I played on the first album.  The 3rd album is coming out soon.  They’re getting played all over the world now, a lot of radio play, it’s amazing.  So, because of that connection I have managed to get a couple of bands playing there.  Acoustic Butterfly was another band I played in that played the there.  Really mellow acoustic material.  Really nice.

K:   On the acoustic point, you’ve always been a bass player but at some point, there was the transition to the Double Bass, which is not an easy step to take.  How did that come about?

G:  Well, I’d just started acting and I knew there was a play coming up called “The Complete History Of Rock n Roll” by the Wildcat Theatre Co and that there was role that I quite fancied.  So, I saw an old Double Bass in a junk shop down the Barras.  It was £270.  I phoned my Dad, from a phone box obviously, no mobiles back then, and he just said “Ok” and he bought it for me, which was quite shocking to be honest with you.  So, I go the money right away and bought it and learned how to play it in 6 months, which is quite hard to do because it’s a very difficult instrument to play because it’s fretless.

I went and got some lessons from a Jazz player and she set me on the path by showing me the positions that helped to make it easier to play and helped me play it without looking at the fretboard.  I found that as soon as you look what you are trying to play on a fretless instrument you get into bother.

I then went along to the audition with my Double Bass and the electric bass and played “Wherever I lay my hat”, unaccompanied, singing and they thought that was quite cool so I got a “Yes” on the day.

Mid 90s I was using it a lot in a band I had started with Brendan called Mellowed Out and we played a lot in The Halt Bar.  That was the hang-out of a lot of the guys I mentioned earlier, Belle & Sebastian etc, so when they realised I played the Double Bass I got quite a bit of work from those guys as well.

From a Blues perspective I’ve used it with Al Brown and before that, The Deke McGee Band.  Deke always did the theatres so that was good, travelling up and down the country doing these bigger gigs and playing the Jazz and Blues Festivals.

I played quite a bit with Debby Duvall and Phil Hoolahan as well, doing Dundee Blues Festival, Arbroath Blues Festival and loads of others. Loads of pub gigs as well.

I had my own band for a while, called The Caravelles, after my first car and I also played with the Alan Anderson Blues Band. 

K:  Caravelle?  Who made that?

G: That was a Renault. If you ever see any of the old 60’s films in France, you’ll see loads of Caravelles.  Beautiful wee car.

K:  You’ve said a couple of times about using all the contacts you’ve made over the years to set up events.  Are there any others that you can remember?

G: Aye there was quite a personal one that I helped set up in the Grand Ole Opry for a mate of mine, Graham Fraser, that had died in Greece.  He died penniless after going over there to try and set up a PA company.  The gig was to raise enough money to get him a headstone.  So, I got The State Bar Blues Band, Dave Arcari and a couple of other bands.  Steve Cabban from CC Music put in a guitar for auction and I put in a diamond pendant and we made a good amount from that.

Graham had been the guy that took me to The State Bar for the first time.  He meant a lot to me.

I also used to play a lot of benefit gigs in Maryhill that again, were organised by Warren McIntyre.  That was players from Belle & Sebastian, Teenage Fan Club, Justin Currie, The BMX Bandits, Camera Obscura.  WE would have a different theme for every one.  A John Lennon one, a Neil Diamond one,  a Paul Simon one and then we decided to do a disco one.  It was quite off the wall but great fun.  The sprouted a huge disco band with 3 horns, 4 singers and wee Sandy Nelson got involved in that as well.  That was another part of my life... the “Disco Part” (laughs) 

K:  More recently I’ve seen the videos and photos from Glasgow Green during lock-down.  Can you tell me a bit more about that?

G:  It was Pete Parisetti and Dennis Smalley that set that up.  They started playing in Glasgow Green themselves just with a wee Roland Cube amp.  And I’d told them that I have a battery powered bass amp, so I went and joined them.  Then a couple of other players joined in and it started getting quite popular.  As it progressed the authorities started to take notice and the audiences started getting too big, so we were told we had to stop.  That was a shame, everyone was social distancing, and everyone was cool about it.  By that time, we had a generator and a full pa,  it was a real shame.  People started looking forward to it after not having seen live music for so long.  I really enjoyed it because I could take the dog with me and he was always a big attraction. 

K:  You sounded a bit surprised that your Dad gave you the money right there and then.  You must’ve thought a bit about that since then.  What do you think prompted him?

G: I think that he realised that I had been playing for quite a few years, and I seemed to be out working quite a lot so he knew that I could play.  I remember the first thing he said to me when I was 14 and I bought my first bass.  He said “Don’t be so bloody ridiculous!  Nobody in this family has ever been musical, so don’t be so stupid.”  No encouragement whatsoever.

But then after he died in 94, I looked through his drawer he had everything I had ever done on Television and Radio and every clipping out of the newspapers that I had been mentioned in.  Everything, all in a folder.  He’d kept a complete record of everything I had ever done.  He did tell me how proud he was at the end, but I never realised he’d kept all that stuff.

K: Any plans for the future?

G: Not at the moment but over the last 20 years the phone has kept ringing every now and then and I’m looking forward to the next one and in the meantime, I’ll keep the pub gigs going until everything starts to settle down again.

K:  Thanks Gary, great to talk to you and we’ll catch up soon for a jam and perhaps a gig when the world returns to some sort of normality.

G:  Thanks Kirk, good talking to you.  Take care.

Date: 07/11/2020

Location

Stewart Memorial Fountain, Kelvingrove Park. Gary has vivid memories of his father having photographs taken in this spot and has been drawn back here on many occasions throughout his life.

Camera info

Camera: Nikon D750
Lens: Nikon 70-200 f2.8
Focal length: 200mm
Exposure: 1/100s
Time of day:  10.50am
Conditions: Misty
Lighting: 24” Softbox camera right 45 degrees. Nikon SB910 ttl. Yongnuo yn662n trigger