It’s always nice to find a little common ground when you’re interviewing someone. As it turns out, Springfield-born singer-songwriter Griffin House and I both spent some formative years – albeit at much different stages in our lives – on campus at Miami University. House’s story is slightly more interesting given that his time in the little city of Oxford paved the way to a musical career that has gained him international recognition.
Recording and performing for well over a decade, House has toured with Ron Sexsmith, Patti Scialfa, Josh Ritter, John Mellencamp, Mat Kearney, and The Cranberries. He received early critical acclaim for an appearance CBS Sunday Morning, and his songs have since been featured in countless films and television shows such as One Tree Hill, Army Wives, and Brothers and Sisters. He has also appeared on Late Night with Craig Ferguson. Most recently, CNN Newsroom invited House to perform “Paris Calling,” from his tenth studio album, So On and So Forth, live on the air. Of his musical finesse, American Songwriter quipped “if you are looking to be blown away by raw talent, then look no further than Griffin House.”
Although he’s now living in Tennessee with his wife and two children, House spoke fondly of his Ohio roots and his return to Columbus, where he’ll make a stop on his current tour at A & R Music Bar on Friday night. “I always love coming back to Columbus because I’m a Buckeye – and I’m glad to be back in the land of the Buckeyes. I was just thinking, too, I always make a joke about going to Schmidt’s when I come to town – I don’t know if you’ve ever been (there) in German Village. But for some reason…I don’t know if it’s still up there or not, but my buddy Rusty who goes there all time, he said ‘Google up Schmidt’s’. And if you put in Schmidt’s or something, apparently they have a picture up of me playing guitar. I don’t know how it got up there or why it’s on there, but maybe somebody attached that because I’d mentioned it in my shows or something. (laughs)”
I did some reading about your formative years, and it’s pretty widely reported that you turned down a golf scholarship at Ohio University in order to pursue music. So, you eventually ended up at Miami. When and why did you eventually pick up a guitar?
“Well, part of it was that I didn’t really turn down the scholarship to do music – I turned it down because I knew the NCAA would own my ass for four years (laughs). I felt like I was a little burnt out with golf, and I think I felt like I didn’t have a huge future there. I kind of thought maybe I’d go to school and be a slave to playing golf, but not be able to go with it – I guess I didn’t believe I was good enough to go play on the PGA Tour and compete at the highest level. Maybe…I don’t know. Who knows? For whatever reason, I just opted…I was feeling discouraged by that and decided to go to Miami. I wanted to go to Europe and wanted to do the Luxembourg (exchange) program. And that was huge for me. I felt like there was a bigger world out there other than just kind of the golf world…there was more to it. So I knew if I went to Miami I’d at least get to go to this really beautiful campus that felt representative of a larger world to me, somehow. I don’t know why, but just going to school there – it felt different than kind of going down in the Hocking Hills at OU where I had my golf scholarship…I just felt like I’d be isolated there. But for some reason Miami felt like I had access to a larger world – I’d be able to go over to Europe and do new things. I felt excited about being in school there for four years and seemed like a brighter time – I had more family that went through Miami and I knew they all loved it. So I felt it would make me happy in the long run, and thankfully my parents were pretty supportive of me doing that.
I started playing guitar when I got to school; I couldn’t really play at all when I got to Miami. I lived in an arts dorm and I kind of learned from some other guys around there who were playing music around campus.”
And eventually, you got discovered by Nettwerk Records – being Canadian myself and having lived in Vancouver where it was founded, that’s a big-time accomplishment. How did that happen?
“That’s a good question – it happened in kind of a roundabout way. I’d moved to Nashville and got some attention from some major labels really quickly. There’s a guy in town here – who I don’t talk to much anymore, even though he lives down the street. His name’s Dave Barnes – he’s a songwriter and he wrote a song that Blake Shelton picked up a few years ago called “God Gave Me You”, so he’s been really successful. I met him right when I got to town – and there’s, like, a handful of these singer-songwriter guys…back then, it was just Christian music and country music in Nashville, but there was a handful of guys doing singer-songwriter stuff. It wasn’t like it was now where everyone and their brother moves to Nashville to start a hipster band or something (laughs). All these movie star people are here now. But back then, it was just this really small…I guess (Barnes) had some interest at a record label called Island-Def Jam up in New York, and when he was up there they asked him who he was listening to in town and he handed them my demo – for some reason he had my music.
And it kind of started this thing where that label called me and…I was just hanging out in Nashville and I got a call from a label in New York, and that was a really big deal. I was working at a gift shop at the time trying to pay the rent and writing songs at night – just kind of believing in myself and playing a lot of shows. And then I had to get a music lawyer so I could try and get a record deal done – and then I think it was through that music lawyer…he knew a representative at Nettwerk who was here in town. She didn’t seem that interested in me, really, but she maybe passed my album along to the president of the company, and (he) heard one of my songs and wanted to sign me immediately. I remember he wrote an email – it was Christmas Day, I think – and it got (it) on my Grandma’s computer in Springfield, Ohio, and it was ‘we’ve got to do this deal now‘, and I’m like ‘well, this is Christmas Day, so he must be pretty serious.’ So that next year I flew up to Vancouver with my lawyer and we signed the deal at Nettwerk. It was basically a management deal and I already had a record recorded, so they picked (it) up and put it out through their label and licensed it from me. And that began about a seven or eight-year management relationship with them. So I was managed by them for quite some time. And now I’m doing more things myself – I have a smaller, boutique agency that books my shows, and I kind of oversee stuff myself and have some people that help me with tour publicity and stuff like that. It’s much more of an ‘on-your-own’ Ani DiFranco-style. (laughs)”
And is that freeing to some extent when you self-manage as opposed to being affiliated with a big label? I imagine that means you have to work harder to make more things happen, but is that a good trade-off to have more control in your own decision-making?
“Yeah, definitely. I think it was good in the beginning to get signed on to a bigger company that could help get me out there a little bit and give me a start. But then once it got going I realized I’d always thought bigger was better – and then I started seeing the limitations within that model because the companies are often so big that you have to go through so much red tape to get anything really done. And they don’t pay attention to artists that are just trying to get off the ground like me because they have all their other big moneymakers, you know? At Nettwerk, they had people like Sarah McLachlan and Barenaked Ladies, or whatever, and they’d be focusing on artists like that. And then for me, my booking agent also booked John Mayer, Kings of Leon, My Morning Jacket, and Dave Matthews – so they’re not going to give me the time of day, basically. It’s like ‘let’s see if I can get a return phone call.’ Luckily, I had a couple of good day-t0-day managers at Nettwerk who…a guy named Dalton Sim, who still manages Guster and that band Fun. who did really well a few years ago. He was really good at helping me get on the road and touring and building a live audience, so the fact that he was there helped me through – that was part of the reason I was able to keep going and do what I’m doing.”
The new album is really excellent – I’ve been listening to that over the past few weeks and also dug into your back catalog a bit. I think you’ve always been a pretty reflective singer and songwriter, but in your mind how have you grown since your first project back in 2004?
“I don’t even know if I’ve grown as an artist – and I know that sounds like a weird thing to say. I know for sure I’ve grown as a person in a lot of ways, and I think my art couldn’t help but grow in certain ways because I think that the songs have always been really just a reflection of what’s going on inside me – and what’s going on in my life. I’ve always kind of written about that. I started to get a hold on how to write a song probably sometime after moving to Nashville – and I still think a lot of the stuff I did was really great because I was able to put so much time and focus into it then, and really kind of live it, sleep it, breathe it, and eat it all the time. Now, I’m kind of more…it’s a part of what I do with my life – but I’m a family guy first now and I also run a small business touring my music around, so my art…I’d love it if it could be what it used to be, where I had all this time to focus on it and be immersed in it. But I feel like I sort of learned the trade awhile ago, and I still use that trade to express myself. But I mean, I hope that over time you just become better…I sort of look at it as, you know…if you’re a pro athlete, for instance, and you’re showing up on the field your rookie year – you may be just as good in terms of your talent level, but you get better with experience and age and you do things that try to help you get better at what you’re trying to accomplish. I feel like that a little bit.
I remember Jackson Browne saying that he feels like he’s competing with his younger self all the time, because he wrote all these amazing songs when he was twenty years old. And now he’s sixty-something and its sort of hard…it’s not that he’s worse or better, but he’s trying to get back to that place where he had all that inspiration and he simply can’t re-create those circumstances. Bob Dylan said it in his Chronicles book, too, that you can’t repeat the circumstances that were happening when he was writing ‘The Times They Are A-Changin”, you know?”
And you’ve had the good fortune of meeting some of your musical heroes like Jackson Browne – and you met Springsteen early on in your career. There’s that cliched saying “don’t meet your heroes,” but it sounds like you were rather enriched by those experiences.
“It’s all been really good. The Springsteen stuff was a great memory – it’s a little bit hard because I think back on it and about how green I was, not only as an artist, but as a person. Now meeting him, I feel like…it would be great if I could run into him and talk to him now, because I feel like I could have some more things to talk about or some more level-headed things to answer him. I think meeting him back then, I was in awe of him and probably said some really flattering things – and I’m sure I was very respectful. It was hard to know how to relate to somebody of that magnitude. I think now I’d probably be just as appreciative of the situation, but I’d be able to cool and more level-headed about it. I wish I was still in touch with him, you know – we had such a special…at least for me it was a really great interaction to have as a twenty-four-year-old guy. He definitely went out of his way to take time to really connect with me, which was super cool.”
So On And So Forth seems to be doing well and is gaining a lot of positive traction, and the reviews and reactions I’ve read so far have been really favorable. As you’re going on the road with this new project, almost thirteen years into your professional career, what sort of energy do you get from performing live now as you play to your audience that’s been really faithful to you for the duration?
“It still feels really good in the sense that when I get to play a show and somebody tells me they really felt something, or that the music really appeals to them in some way – that’s the biggest reward for me. George Michael just passed away a couple of days ago, as you probably know – and I wrote something on social media about him, saying something about him being a bigger influence on me than I realized because I was still really moved by his singing and it made me love music so much. It was those types of artists that when they sang, I felt emotional, you know? I could feel it in their voice and their singing – and there was something so genuine and honest about that, and at the same time, other-worldly. I wanted to be a part of that somehow…I wanted to maybe emulate that or give that gift to people. It’s been a good feeling to express myself that way and have other people say that it helps them, because I think at the beginning I was probably trying to help myself and fix something in me. To know that it’s kind of the way that it works – that other people can benefit from it, too – it a pretty beautiful thing.”
Griffin House will perform at A & R Music Bar, 391 Neil Avenue in the Arena District, this Friday, January 20, at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $16.00 (plus taxes and fees) and are general admission, available via Ticketmaster.