Interview: Larkin Grimm | Crib Notes » Atlanta Music Blog

by Chad Radford

You’re from Dahlonega, correct?

Yeah, I’m home and I’m sitting here with this huge view of the Appalachian mountains and it’s great and there are church bells singing some Southern hymn. I was born in Memphis and then I lived in Atlanta for 5 or 6 years — Grant Park. My dad was an Appalachian fiddler and he wanted to learn from a teach who lives up here, named Bruce Molsky. We moved here so he could be closer to the fiddle and banjo people.

Does he still play?

Yeah, his name is John Grimm and he’s in a band called the Georgia Potlickers and he has a music store up here called Vintage Music on the Dahlonega square.

Did your interest in music stem from growing up watching your father play?

Definitely, it’s kind of all he does. He’s always worked like 16 hours a day teaching lessons, doing repairs and selling instruments. In the evenings he’s either playing a show himself or working with a recording engineer or sound engineer somewhere. If I was hanging out with my dad it was always at a concert or at his shop. I used to walk home from school and he would give me a nickel to tune all of the guitars in the shop.

He’s really into Eastern music as well — he was a hippie — so he was trying to give me a classical Indian kind of training where you have to spend years tuning an instrument before you can actually play it.

“Ride That Cyclone” mp3

Your upbringing probably has a lot to do with just how distinctive your sound and identity have become.

Yeah well my two loves have always been music and art. I went to art school at Yale. When I was there I was always listening to the weirdest music I could fine in the painting studio. The Velvet Underground, Laurie Anderson, Diamanda Galas, Meredith Monk, Philip Glass. Art music.

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