an indie-rock combo. For their 2001 album Soundtrack to a Chessmatch, The Dustin Change sought out an old friend and fellow Hoosier — Newburgh, Ind., native Jeremy Ferguson. The LP was an early project for Ferguson’s then-fledgling Nashville studio Battle Tapes Recording. That year, Chappell bowed out of Mock Orange to focus on his family. Grisham, Metzger and guitarist Joe Asher didn’t have to look far for a replacement. With Grace in the fold, the foursome put out a trio of LPs over the next decade: 2004’s knotty, epic Mind Is Not Brain, 2006’s Ferguson-recorded Captain Love and 2011’s Disguised as Ghosts, which Grace produced. The bassist also made his first solo foray in 2010 with A Name and a Shape, and had started work on a second. Even as Grace was thriving creatively, he was out in the weeds personally. After a “horribly dark” year living with his now-ex-wife in Carbondale, Ill., he relocated to Nashville at the urging of another transplanted Evansvillian: Aaron Distler, then drummer for poppy alt-rockers Heypenny. (He’d later go on to be comic Ralphie May’s personal assistant, and after May’s death, launched pasta and bakedgoods purveyor Mr. Aaron’s Goods.) Landing on his feet with a stint as Heypenny’s touring guitaristkeyboardist, Grace began building a résumé as an engineer. With Mock Orange slowing down, he filled the playing void by joining bands like the flannelflying Efforts and ’70s-rock-inspired Shut Up. Now an indie-rock legacy act, Mock Orange resurfaced in 2016 with its sixth LP Put the Kid on the Sleepy Horse, issued by San Diego’s Topshelf Records, and returned twice to Japan. They’ve enjoyed sustained popularity in Japan since their early years, not unlike how European tours have consistently helped Nashville collective Lambchop break even. In between recording clients at Self-Help International — which spans the subterranean half of the split-level house where Grace lives with his wife L.E. (also Mock Orange’s manager) and ginger tabby cat Wallace — the musician-producer chipped away at the follow-up to A Name and a Shape he’d begun writing a decade earlier. Last year, under quarantine, he finally finished it. “I was really grappling with what I was tying up here,” he explains. “When I started on [Intelligent Design Flaw] I lived in a different city. Had a different wife. Different jobs. Different lifestyle. And through all this change, my life was recorded.” Revisiting the raw angst of Carbondale-era material like “Nothing at All” used to unnerve Grace, but now he leans into it. New songs like the LP’s first and last tracks “Canary Never Sang” and “Bathe in the Light of the Sun,” meanwhile, spilled right out. After four months of intensive mixing, the 11-song set developed its sonic identity. “I wanted it to be a colorful guitar album,” Grace says. “Bright sound, bright artwork … psychedelic in a way that’s like … white-trash psychedelia.” Intelligent Design Flaw satisfies those aims, swinging from cacophonous power pop (“Get Real,” which features soaring guitar-monies — and cowbell!) to nervy New Wave (“Never Had It So Good”) and lysergic alt-country (“Slapstick Tragedy”). A homespun collage of recorded and synthesized instruments, beats and textures, with Grace’s reedy vocals acting as the glue, it revels in being unburdened by deadlines. It communicates the familiarity of a home studio one can navigate blindfolded — and the relief in moving forward. “I wrote a lot of this record while at odds with myself, so it felt freeing to complete it,” Grace says. “In bands, I’m a journeyman. I got into producing because I’m a facilitator. But I had to make something personal … which I guess I do every 10 years.” EMAIL MUSIC@NASHVILLESCENE.COM
PHOTOS: ERIC ENGLAND
MUSIC
GEARING UP: SOUNDS ABOUT PERFECT Hi Tech Service’s Tom Brucker leaves a hi-fi legacy behind BY ABBY LEE HOOD
T
om Brucker stands outside his time capsule of a hi-fi store and repair shop off Nolensville Pike helping a friend load an old DVD player into a van. Brucker says he’s trying to keep as much equipSTORE CLOSING SALE APRIL 17-18 AT ment as possible HI TECH SERVICE, from being tossed 2934 NOLENSVILLE PIKE when Hi Tech Service closes its doors at the end of May. “It’s like adopting puppies,” Brucker says of all the receivers, speakers and other home stereo gear he’s parting with. “It’s part of finding a good home.” Brucker moved to Nashville in 1978 and started working at Anderson Audio, where he repaired stereos, televisions and more. He eventually bought his own testing equipment, all of which went with him whenever he changed jobs and still sits on a crowded work table in his shop. In late 1984, Brucker and business partner Tommy Harmon bought out a dealer they worked for and opened Hi Tech in Madison. Later, they moved the shop to its current location at 2934 Nolensville Pike, and Brucker took full ownership in 1987.
On a tour of the shop, Brucker points to amplifiers, receivers and turntables that still need repair — the shop ceases taking new repair orders May 1 as he winds down the operation. Without notes, he identifies each piece and its owner. He passes a giant turntable from the 1930s, capable of playing 14-inch discs, which he’s repairing for the Southern Baptist Convention. He notes that Jack White also has one, but it’s better. He knows this because he fixed it himself. Helene Kreigh has been the officer manager at Hi Tech since 2014. She says the shop’s customers love to tell their stories. “They talk about the good ol’ days, stereo pieces they bought using their allowance, and that one album on that one pair of speakers that changed their lives forever,” Kreigh says. “[Hi Tech] will be greatly missed by so many.” To clear the store, Hi Tech will have a giant parking-lot sale on Saturday and Sunday, which will move indoors if there’s rain. Brucker cautions that not everything in the
store is for the person wanting to buy their first stereo system — much of the gear is of the sort that, while it may be working now, it’ll need maintenance and probably more repairs over time. He also says he wanted to have a sale last year, but COVID changed more than a few plans. The pandemic also encouraged more audiophiles and vinyl lovers to invest in the equipment they use to listen to music. Brucker sees a new generation of stereo lovers geeking out over their setups, and he estimates that his sales increased 25 percent during the pandemic. He points to how listening to analog media on a quality stereo rewards the work that goes into it, in a way that streaming music from a phone — or even listening on CD — does not. “When you sit there and listen, well, what does that do to your body?” he says. “In Europe, they play music for people in hospital — they recover faster. People listen to music to relax and calm down. There’s a physiological response. They call it ‘warm sound.’ When
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