Granville Automatic’s new album Tiny Televisions is now available. It is a companion piece to the band’s first 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.
Tiny Televisions features new songs inspired by Nashville’s lost history, including songs about the Trail of Tears (“Monsters in the Stars”), one of the city’s first African-American business owners (“Ice Cream”), the death of an Opry star (“Opryland”), Outlaw country (“Getaway Car”), a long-forgotten neighborhood near the state capitol (“Hell’s Half Acre”) and a ‘60s-era nursing home on 17th Avenue (“Tiny Televisions”). The band co-wrote the songs with some of their favorite songwriters in town, including the legendary Tom Douglas.
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 Dawes, Granville Automatic has created a one-of-a-kind sound that revolves around their passion for storytelling. The duo, comprised of Nashville songwriters Vanessa Olivarez and Elizabeth Elkins, 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 750,000 streams to date, and their recent singles have been added to 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 full-length is Radio Hymns, a 13-track concept record mining Nashville’s lost history from the two wives of city founder Timothy Demonbreun to the day in 1974 that the Ryman Auditorium was saved from the wrecking ball. The album features guest appearances from Jim Lauderdale, Kevin Griffin of Better Than Ezra, Ben Fields and Matraca Berg. Elkins and Olivarez self-produced the record, using some longtime Granville players and some of Nashville’s legendary studio musicians (and studios). The album rocks and rolls, haunts and soars, and pays true homage to the mystery of Music City. The album has been featured in USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Bitter Southerner, The Tennessean, No Depression, American Songwriter and many more.
Elkins and Olivarez 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, Ty Herndon, Shenandoah, Radney Foster and The SteelDrivers.