The band is named after one of our guitarist's old hangouts. It's a place that was located in Michigan's Upper Peninsula near where he grew up. (It went out of business many years ago.) We were struggling to find a name, and while driving around in the car one night it got suggested, half-jokingly, and it just stuck.

Yeah, all around Michigan and into the neighboring states. We've really enjoyed playing the State Theatre in our hometown of Kalamazoo, the Orbit Room in Grand Rapids, and St. Andrew's Hall in Detroit. Those are some great venues. But we'll play anywhere, anytime, for anyone who wants to hear us. We even played an outdoor show at Western Michigan University in 30-degree weather once. (Not many bands can say they've played a set in sub-freezing stage temperatures - they're probably smarter than we are!)

If anything, it's allowed a far more even "distribution of power", if you will, between the independent artists/labels and the major record companies. It's so much easier for independent bands to be heard and very widely distributed now - without a huge chunk of capital. We've sold a surprising number of our CDs in Europe, and have fans on 4 or 5 continents as a direct result of file sharing or downloading services like this site.

Hard to say - it'd have to be a really unusual deal, that allowed for a lot of musical freedom and tour schedule flexibility. So probably not. The majors just spend so much money promoting new artists, and only about 1 in 10 actually recoups that investment for the label. It's a very hard position for the label to be in, and even harder for the bands... even the successful ones. A well-respected indie label will usually be much more responsive to the band's ideas and creative convictions, and although there isn't as much funding available, there's a real opportunity for a band to make a living without giving up its musical integrity.

The band is the brainchild of guitarist Dave Pearson and bassist Greg Meyer, who started writing and playing music together casually in 1993. The two met in a Non-Western Music class, and both were looking for a heavy band where they could enjoy the freedom to shape a new sound around their widely varied musical tastes. After several years of on-and-off playing and numerous temporary lineups, the band was finally completed with the addition of drummer Dave Martinson in late 1997. Martinson brought a strong and focused work ethic to the group, and by April of 1998, the band was playing club dates and soon began recording for their first demo disc, aptly titled intro.



As Grotto North grew into a hard-working, cohesive unit, the band found themselves in exciting new territory, opening for national acts like Roadrunner Records’ The Step Kings and building a mailing list of hundreds of fans. Always ready to make the most of their opportunities, they also began to play local charity events for radio stations, free shows to all-ages crowds, and were the only band that weathered the 30-degree stage temperatures at a Western Michigan University outdoor event. The band’s love for live performance even attracted the attention of Grammy Award-winning drummer and producer Narada Michael Walden who once sat in with them at Kalamazoo’s legendary Club Soda.



Their first full album, Silence Broken, was released in 2001 and sold over 600 copies directly from the band in the first 4 months alone. While the band kept busy playing club dates across Michigan and beginning to branch out into the regional scene, it also started to gain a following in places it has never been, thanks to the World Wide Web. Two consecutive singles placed in the top 100 in their genre on mp3.com, and the single Blind was selected from over 2000 songs in the Hard Rock genre as “Track of the Day” due to enthusiastic reviews on garageband.com. The Grotto North mailing list grew to include fans in over 40 cities in 3 countries, and nationwide U.S. retail chain distribution was secured for Silence Broken.



Trouble hit in early 2002, though, as the members began to burn out after playing 2 years of live dates with almost no new material. A break was agreed upon, and the band withdrew from the scene to regroup and rethink Grotto North. During what was intended to be a short few months off, several blows were dealt the band with one bad situation seemingly followed only by another. One member effectively collapsed under the strain of tragic events in his personal life, taking months to be able to truly focus on music again. Just as the band was beginning to make progress again, they found their rehearsal space of 5 years suddenly put up for sale one day, padlocked without warning or explanation, with all of their equipment still inside.



In early 2003, the members found a way to reclaim their equipment from their former rehearsal space and set about building their own soundproof facility at one of their homes. After 3 months of research and construction, Grotto North had a home again. From March to October, the band began to write music again, completing a few individual songs in addition to a group of 5 songs written specifically to be performed together as a single piece of music. These 5 songs were recorded in October of 2003, and their "concept EP" entitled A Trail of Ash and Bone is due to be released in mid 2004, with more individual songs still being written for a subsequent full-length CD.

So many influences... let's see...

The early ones were bands like Metallica, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Dio, Motorhead, Slayer - stuff like that. Then there's a lot of progressive influence from bands like Rush and Dream Theatre. And unlikely artists like Simon & Garfunkel, Dave Matthews Band, Fiona Apple, Bjork, Sigur Ros, and Andres Segovia have an influence, too. The current bands we like a lot are bands like Tool, A Perfect Circle, Incubus, Chevelle, Staind, System of a Down, etc.