Country Western-influenced grunge pop problem children from the basements and backyards North Central Iowa.

12 MP3 Songs in this album (37:33) !
Related styles: ROCK: Grunge, POP: Folky Pop



Details:
On February 3rd, 1959, a handsome, young man was found dead alongside two of his close friends on field in North Central Iowa. In his wallet was $193 and a recently of-age I.D. indicating his name to be that of Charles Hardin Holley, or as most of the world had come to know him, quite simply as âBuddyâ. A lot has happened in that part of the world since then. Well, at least a little. If nothing else, a handful of friends phoenixed from the ashes of American Pie, some twenty miles and forty-odd years down the dirt road. Two guys and a gal, to be exact. And summoned out of the wreckage with hardly an of-age I.D. between the three of âem, Giving Up gasped and barked its first breath of life into an un-air-conditioned corner of the world. This was Mikieâs motherâs house. This was the summer of 2006.

Shacked up over a series of living-room recording sessions throughout the following year, longtime like-minds Jenny Rose, Sean Roth, and Mikie Poland stuck their heads down deep in a three-box inheritance of Grandmaâs country western records, held hands, and inhaled. Suddenly, Ernest Tubb and Hank Snow shook hands with the Ben Weasel within. With little more than a few guitars, a small reed organ, a harmonica, a boom-box tape recorder, one bad case of the chicken pox, and a pile of lyrics originally intended for the unrealized thrash-metal band Mischa Barton, the trio wrote and recorded a string of arguably listenable demo tapes which would soon become what we have before us.

Set to release this spring on Chicagoâs Sophomore Lounge Records, Giving Upâs debut effort, 'Gthrowing Up', is a hand-sewn, home-grown gemstone in the making. And should Mikie Poland meet his maker in an untimely misfortune before his record soon sees the light of day, I can guarantee we wonât find anywhere close to $193 in his wallet. Perhaps a couple bucks, a burrito receipt, and bus pass at best. But one afternoon last fall, toward the completion of the album, Poland did have $500 in his hand. Cash. His grandparents had given it to him as a sort of âget your shit togetherâ gesture, or something. Incentive for a proposed investment. In an effort to earn enough money for the pressing and eventual release of the bandâs debut, Poland did propose an investment. He proposed to throw every cold, hard dollar of it at friend and label operator Ryan Davisâ father to place on a craps table in Las Vegas if Davis agreed to match him for it. To make a long and tragic story even shorter than it already is, letâs just say the two soon had to begin looking elsewhere for the necessary funding. Thus, the prolonged arrival of 'Gthrowing Up'.

With all that said and done, the breeze still blows. The album is still here. 'Gthrowing Up' is still as charmingly raw as it was in its challengingly lo-fi stages of inception. The three friends are still friends, driving their Chevy to the levy and puking their proverbial guts out. And though, for many still, after all these years, the music may have died on that snowy field back â59, the time is now for Iowa not to grow up, but to stay young, shining down on its darkest of basements, giving up its reservations if only to finally give back for what it may have once taken.