Eddie Gripper on Americana

Composer and pianist Eddie Gripper has been steadily carving out a distinctive voice, one shaped by a rich blend of styles, genres, and personal experiences, and rooted in the intimacy of a trio setting. His latest album, Americana, is a compelling collection of largely original compositions, inspired by an extraordinary six-week hitchhiking journey he took with his best friend from Alaska to California, capturing their remarkable experiences in musical form.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking with Eddie about some of the most memorable moments from that trip, as well as the striking contrasts he encountered during his time in America…

I understand that your new album Americana stems from a trip to America? What first inspired you to take that journey, and did you anticipate it becoming a musical project?

Yes, that’s true. I went on this crazy hitchhiking experience with my best friend, Henry, and we've always had lots of fun doing adventures and exciting things like that together. In 2016, we walked the entire length of the Thames Path: from the source all the way to the Thames Barrier, and we raised a fair bit of money for that as well. We’ve previously attempted to walk one hundred miles in forty-eight hours, which we're going to be doing again this May – we didn't quite manage to do it last year! But back in 2020 we decided we'd like to do this huge adventure, which unfortunately for obvious reasons was knocked back. That was probably a good thing, because we were hideously underplanned and underprepared for it; I don’t think we really realised the full scope of what it was that we wanted to do.

The trip was very personal too. Henry's dad unfortunately had passed away in 2019 and we decided that we wanted to try and do something that's bold and daring because, Bob, his dad, was super adventurous. He was really supportive of everything we did as kids, so we decided we wanted to do something in his memory. Naturally things got put off in 2020 and in 2021. Eventually we went on the trip in 2022, by which time my grandfather too had unfortunately passed away. He was a big influence on both of our lives, due to the fact that Henry is basically a part of my family, so we decided to do this in the memory of both of them as a joint operation, I suppose. 

We did raise some money, which is something that I haven't really had chance to mention a lot. Bob, Henry's dad, was unfortunately suffering from Parkinson's and my grandfather was unfortunately suffering from Alzheimer's, so we wanted to raise a bit of money in the process, and we did. 

In terms of making it a musical project, I had absolutely no idea that's what I was going to do, or that it was going to turn out that way. It just so happens that I ended up getting all this material, worked through it, and found that there was enough to do something with. And here we are.

Did you document ideas along the way? What was the process like transforming those initial ideas to full on compositions?

Well, it was rather interesting to be honest. In the end there were about thirty little scraps of music, and some of them were more formed than others. I mean, I had no access to an instrument, so for the first time, I pretty much wrote all the music without one. It was interesting, because I was essentially listening to a lot of music and spending a lot of time in the car.

When we were hitchhiking, sometimes one person would sit up front and do all the talking and the other could sit in the back and chill out. So that's when I wrote a lot of this music, but simultaneously I was doing a lot of listening, consuming, and feeling inspired by music. I was listening along and scribbling down ideas, as maybe a painter would if they were to draw random lines on the page. Sometimes the outcome was pretty nice, sometimes it was pretty rubbish! There's a lot of music that will never see the light of day. 

When I got home, I sat down in front of the piano and picked out the stuff that I liked. Some of it I had to rework a little bit, to get it to what it is now, but there were some ideas that I didn’t really have to do much to. 

A lot of these compositions were influenced by the natural landscape that you found yourself in: how did you go about translating the visionary experiences into musical forms?

That's a very difficult question. I think that the idea of an artist just painting, or maybe a poet letting the pen fall on the page, is really similar to what I was doing. We were experiencing so much – the whole experience itself lasted between five to six weeks, which is actually quite a short time considering how far we actually travelled.

It was incredibly intense; we were exhausted, enjoying ourselves, and every day we woke up somewhere we weren't anticipating to be. You just have no idea where you're going to be, or who you're going to meet – that whole experience was incredibly stimulating. In terms of translating that to the page, I don't think there's much of a process that I can attest to. It was a question of just letting the music speak for itself; it’s similar to my first record in that way. To be honest, just writing music and trusting the artistic impulse is what was driving the creativity, and keeping it true. But I think each of the pieces are reflective of what we were doing at the time: each of the stories, each of the tunes has a different tale to tell.

Are there compositions in particular that really resonate, or that you're particularly proud of on the album?

I'm incredibly proud of the entire record to be honest. Since my first album came out three years ago, I feel like I've developed and changed quite a lot musically. The music on this album was prepared really well, and the band is playing superbly too, so I feel like it's a really really good representation artistically speaking of how I feel today, even though the music's now quite old.

I'm particularly proud of ‘Third Beach’, which is the second single from the record and the first track on the album as well. I feel like it's a really nice composition, and really encapsulates a certain feeling for me when I hear it. At the time, we were cycling in Vancouver (the Third Beach is the name of one of the beaches in Stanley Park), and we stopped there to swim and explore. We'd been trekking through the Alaskan and Canadian wilderness for about 4,000 kilometres to get there. So it was the first major city and the first major part of civilisation that we'd seen in about two and a half weeks. It was the busyness, but also the tranquillity, of that part of the journey that I tried to summarise in that tune.

You’ve spoken about sensing a tension between America’s optimism and its flaws. How did that duality influence the emotional arc of the album?

One of my favourite quotes is from Nina Simone: ‘An artist's duty is to reflect the sign of the times’, though she said it a lot more eloquently than that. But I feel like I had a very unique experience, witnessing what it's like to live in America and to meet real Americans. When hitchhiking, you're meeting salt-of-the-earth people – and people who pick up hitchhikers are interesting in themselves.

Americans, particularly towards British people, are super kind. They're very inquisitive and generous, but also seemingly very unaware at times. That's what struck me a lot, which is a very weird juxtaposition. The general day-to-day people, most of them have never been outside of America. Why would you, I suppose, when you can do everything you could possibly want to do within this country because it's so huge. But there's a lot of problems that I noticed in terms of healthcare, drug crisis, inflation, and the price of food – really serious systemic problems that we don't really have in Europe. Or we do, but not to the extent that they have in America. Most of the time, they're completely oblivious to this because they don't really have that worldly perspective that I think we're privileged of having in Europe, certainly, because we're able to access other parts of the world a lot more easily. 

It was so interesting to have as an experience, but there were a few things that we began to notice that started to make us feel a little bit uneasy. Hearing personal stories from people and hearing about their lives was also incredibly moving, and gave us a really great perspective onto what it's actually like to be in America and what it is to live in America.

The closing track is 'American Tune' by Paul Simon. What drew you to that particular piece as a way to conclude the record?

I've always been a fan of Paul Simon, and I've played a lot of his tunes on my gigs before in the past, so I felt it was natural to pay homage to the great man himself by including a track. During the interim of my first and this current album, I released an album with a singer, Mr. Elijah Jeffery, and throughout the process of writing songs with him I've started to appreciate the role of lyrics a lot more. This journey started pretty much after I got back from America as well, having listened to a lot more non-instrumental music. I wasn't just listening to jazz in the States, I was listening to all different types. 

I've known ‘American Tune’ for a long time, but I never really listened to what it's about properly, and after coming back from America I found it incredibly poignant and incredibly moving. Within the lyrical content, it summed up the experience of our journey: ‘Many years the time I've been forsaken, many years the time I've been used often and abused…’, all that kind of stuff. But it's the idea of picking yourself up, keeping on going, and tomorrow's another working day.

Despite its many flaws, America is an incredibly industrious place and the people there are fascinating. They’re incredibly hardworking, and still very much believe in this idea of the American dream as part of their conscience. All of them have 9-5s, and then during 5-9, they've all got a side hustle – they've all got a dream, something that they're working towards.

I know a lot of people do have side hustles and ambitions in the UK, but it's a different feeling entirely in the US. So I know I have contrasting opinions and experiences, and I felt the song really summed that up. I can't encourage people more to look up the lyrics and check out the original song and listen – really listen – to it.

You mentioned you were listening to genres that extended beyond jazz. Did you find that the album consciously branched into other genres?

That's a very good question. I don't know if I can say whether that's true or not. What I do know is that I was listening to a lot of music, and my brain is kind of a melting pot of a lot of different ideas. This is very much in that jazz-style and also interestingly, it's very similar to my first record, Home, which I released in 2023. These two albums were written back to back with one another: I recorded Home in June of 2022 and in July of 2022, I was on the road with Henry in the US, so I think if anything, I think it's a continuation of that first record.

I'm hoping to try and reach some of those people who enjoyed the first one, because I think if they enjoyed that one, they'll enjoy this one as well.

How did working with Patrick Barrett-Donlon and Clem Saynor shape the sound of the album? 

They were hugely influential. As always with the bands I've worked with in the past, the written music on the page is never the final word. To me, it's kind of 50% really. The idea of the song, the melody and the harmony, is laid out, but the kind of arrangement, the structure of it is something that I feel much more confident discussing in a forum with my band.

Patrick and Clem are fantastic musicians, incredibly sensitive, and are super informed on all the kinds of music that we love together collectively. We've got a very shared sense of sensibility for the music that we love and play and I really, really respect their opinions and always seek their advice and thoughts on the music. It was really a discussion before we recorded this album, and we played the music a fair amount to find a way of making it work. So they're really important to me, and there's no one else I'd want on the record more.

The trio format is quite intimate. Did you know it was that intimate sound you were going for, or was it initially a bit broader to start with?

It was actually a bit broader to start with. I had the idea of including a saxophone, which unfortunately didn't come to materialise, but that'll be a project for another day. But originally I was going to have another voice, and in the end I decided against it. I actually think that was probably the right decision, considering what I've already said about this record and its continuation from my debut. I think it's a spiritual successor, and to keep it as a trio record was a really good shout. 

Playing in a trio is super hard too, so it's a nice continuation artistically for me to show what I've been working on as I've been doing a lot of trio playing. I’ve loved playing with other bands in the meantime, since the first album was recorded. The piano trio playing is hard, and it's something I actually struggle with. But when it's well practiced, and when there's a real and strong concept, which there is in this case, it can be super expressive and really, really enjoyable. So I think it's the right band. The players are fantastic, and it's the right setup for this project.

Looking back now, if you hadn't gone on that trip, would you have this album?

No, absolutely not. If I hadn't gone on this trip, this album wouldn't exist. I'm very much a conceptually driven composer and performer, so I like the idea of having a strong focus for a project. When we play music live, it's always about telling stories and presenting the music  for me. My favourite kind of gigs to go to are where you get to learn so much about the music, and the ideas behind the music and the context. 

Is there anything in particular that you would like listeners to take away from the record?

Well I hope that listeners can join us on the journey, I suppose. I've been reliving the trip through the music but also through creating content on my YouTube channel. We shot a lot of footage with the intention of making a movie, which we never did. It's a pretty good job we didn't make a full movie, because we were just completely exhausted and not really making very much sense at times. We’d be sitting on the side of the road for five hours in some mountain town in rural Canada, just trying to sum it all up.

But I've managed to condense the best parts of the entire journey into three videos which I’ve paired with each of the singles. One of them is about the Alaskan part of the journey, which is travelling through rural Alaska, starting on an oil field in the north and trying to escape polar bears and things. 

In ‘Dana’, there's a nice video of us travelling from San Francisco all the way through middle California. And in ‘Third Beach’, we kind of start in rural Canada where this Alaskan video takes off and then goes all the way down to San Francisco. So it's kind of like, you can get an idea of the whole trip very broadly. I just want people to join us on the journey, I suppose.

Any opinions I have about America are my own and I am happy to share those. They're not integral to the record itself. I just want people to relive this journey with me. Anyone can go onto my YouTube channel and check those videos out as well, because I've really enjoyed putting it together and reliving these experiences.

What's coming up for you?

We’re going to be touring in June and July. We've got just under thirty dates, so it’s exciting but busy, and we're also going to be playing a show in Bristol in August which is fun. For the foreseeable future, we're gonna be on the road touring and promoting this record. I'm looking forward to releasing it to the world, and sharing it with anyone who wants to listen.