Granville Automatic is the songwriting partnership of Elizabeth Elkins and Vanessa Olivarez. Not quite a country band, and not quite a rock band, they will both agree they are, above all else, a storytelling band.
The duo is currently in the studio working on Ghosts of Rooms, a double album about Paris’ Hotel La Louisiane and New York City’s Hotel Chelsea. Every song is a first-person account of the experience of a famous resident, including Miles Davis, Simone de Beauvoir and Salvador Dali in Paris — and Patti Smith, Sid and Nancy, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin and Eugene O’Neill in New York.
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Granville Automatic writes songs the Associated Press calls “haunting tales of sorrow and perseverance.” With influences as diverse as Leonard Cohen, Linda Ronstadt, Simon & Garfunkel and The Airborne Toxic Event, Granville Automatic has created a one-of-a-kind sound that revolves around their passion for storytelling. The duo is named after a 19th-century typewriter.
The girls’ devotion to the project has proved a chaotic road of back-breaking touring, interpersonal tension, former-day-job balancing, other-band leaving, and a love-hate dynamic that brought them from Atlanta to Nashville. Theirs is a creative partnership reminiscent of Lennon-McCartney, a dreamer-doer, accessible-obtuse, country-rock collision of two polar opposites. What the two share, however, is a love for nostalgia: old records and antiques, tarot cards and dusty books, ghosts on battlefields and lost stories from the past. That common ground has produced music praised by The New York Times, USA Today and Rolling Stone.
They have more than a million streams to date, with appearances on Apple Music's Hot Country Tracks, Featured Americana Tracks, and the Southern Craft playlist - as well as Pandora's New Country and Spotify’s New Music Nashville.
Granville Automatic’s most recent albums, Tiny Televisions and Radio Hymns feature songs inspired by Nashville’s lost history. The albums garnered press from USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Bitter Southerner, The Tennessean, No Depression, American Songwriter and many more.
Vanessa and Elizabeth are co-authors of the critically-acclaimed book Hidden History of Music Row (The History Press), with a foreword by Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn. The book was named the Best Book of 2020 by No Depression.
The two have written songs recorded by country stars Billy Currington (the Billboard Country Top 30 single “Drinkin’ Town With A Football Problem”), Sugarland, Kira Isabella (the Billboard Canadian Country Top 15 hit “Little Girl”), Aaron Goodvin, Wanda Jackson, Angaleena Presley and numerous others. Their songwriting led them to a coveted Composers in Residence spot at Seaside, Fla.’s Escape to Create program. They’ve appeared on Sirius XM’s “The Buddy & Jim Show”, DittyTV, PBS’ Sun Studio Sessions and WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. You may have heard their songs on ABC’s American Crime and The Lying Game, as well as Netflix’s The Ranch. Their tour schedule often tops 100 shows a year, including stops at SXSW, the Key West, Island Hopper, Red River and 30A Songwriters festivals, CMA Fest and Tin Pan South. They’ve played at venues from the legendary Joshua Tree roadhouse Pappy & Harriet’s to Texas’ haunted Gruene Hall and have shared the stage with Gretchen Peters, Little Texas, Shenandoah, Radney Foster and The SteelDrivers.