Featured Music Story

Featured Music Story
God’s honest truth
Like all good storytellers, G. Ningroy know truth is stranger than fiction
by Marcie Hill

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“I take what I can fathom and ... little bits of my
reality and expand them into what could be if that was the entirety of my reality.”
—Abraham Piper
“Popeye’s is great ’cuz it’s the only bar where people bring their kids,” Abraham Piper of G. Ningroy says, nodding toward the other end of the room where a towheaded 7-year-old boy is involved in a trivia game.
    Some day, Abraham and bandmate Tom Feldmann would like to own this bar on Lake and 36th, where they sit at a corner table on a Friday night chuckling over Bloody Marys. Of course, they would make a few changes: the jukebox selection needs a serious makeover, although Abraham brightens when Alan Jackson’s “Chatahoochie” comes on. He explains that this is the first song he ever learned to play, though admittedly not well.
    Since then, he has built both his repertoire and skill. Both Abraham and Tom were accomplished musicians, each in his own right before they met. Abraham cut his teeth on local gigs to great effect and has released two solo albums over the last three years. Tom, the elder of the two, has released two solo projects to considerable acclaim and has played slide and lead guitar in two successful traveling acts. Though each one is clear on his own history, the circumstances of their meeting get a little confused.
    One story has it that a drunken night in a pub culminated in Abraham’s bursting into “I Will Always Love You,” (“the Dolly Parton version!” they yell out together) which tickled Tom enough to want to join forces. Another, plainer version states that Abraham saw Tom play at a coffee house gig last August, and their shared interests bound them musically. Each report is true they claim, but considering that storycrafting is their forte, it’s not surprising that they would have more than one version to tell of their first encounter.
    This yarnspinning is a taste of the kind that G. Ningroy explore in their live album, Live ... Last Night. Lovestruck young drunks, convicts and other lonely sorts populate the duo’s gritty songs.
    “Those are the people I usually meet,” says Tom, who is fascinated by society’s fringe. He considers the people who approach him at the bar or after a show, focusing on the hard-luck biographies. “They’re more interesting to talk to and [they] tell me their life stories.”
    The 24-year-old babyface with blond dreds sits back in his chair reflectively. “That sounds bad. It sounds like I’m ripping off other people’s stories, but it’s not true. I’m storytelling.”
    A mutual love of creative nonfiction in song seems to be the most stable connection between the two. Like Feldmann, Piper explains that no character in his songs exactly represents him, since he conflates his lived experiences with imagination as he writes.
    “I take what I can fathom and ... little bits of my reality and expand them into what could be if that was the entirety of my reality,” he says.
    Such musing might seem surprising coming from a 22-year-old pastor’s son from South Minneapolis sporting a secondhand plaid shirt and a longshoreman-style hat, but with two years studying philosophy at the U of M and Wheaton under his belt, he can talk the talk of the erudite. High-minded though his chats are, his lyrics read like easygoing—if darkly personal—disclosures, and the events that he retells could be taken from his life, given his age and background.
    While each half of the duo writes fictions “based on real events, like a TV movie,” as Tom says, they differ slightly on the nature of the truths that they are telling.
    “I don’t think truth changes depending on who you are,” Abraham adds. None of the deeper realities that he writes about, like hoping for love or encountering suicidal depression, happen in a vacuum. The experiences he retells translate because of their universality.
    Tom, on the other hand, dips into a wider pool of experiences to fuel his writing, and does not bother with the probability of knowing the troubles of his characters. Rather than being born of his own feelings, they are instead emblematic of hollow defeat, American-style. “South Dakota Farm,” the album’s second track, is the portrait of a man who has lost his farm and his family, and is busy snuffing his remaining hope in drink. It’s not Tom’s life, but all the same, “it’s a true story,” he says.
    “There are like 10 stories in that song, and they’re all true,” he adds. His songs call up images of dusty welfare offices circa 1932, train jumpings, chain gangs and dive bars like this one.
    In the tradition of acoustic blues, G. Ningroy’s writing is kitchen-sink real, if their sink is sometimes half full of moonshine. The sound, though, is hard to place in any existing genre. At first listen, it’s one part blues, two parts country, one part bluegrass and one part rock. Their style is clean and masculine, and the vocals are rich and growly. Abraham sings like a young Johnny Cash who has misplaced his twang, while Tom holds tunefully to his Delta blues roots with a voice much older than he is. On three of the album’s tracks, backup singer Anika Johnson’s voice sets free the otherwise subtler sweetness in the music.
    “When I think I have them nailed down to a style, they change it,” remarks Will Anderson, G. Ningroy’s agent. And no wonder—the guys themselves are reluctant to pick a category. They have fixed on alternative country; the stylistic freedom there allows them to be just as rugged as they wanna be, while keeping to their raconteur’s roots.
    “I love stories,” Tom declares, “and people who write stories.” He adds that legendary Americana folkie Townes Van Zandt has importantly influenced the pair.
    “[Van Zandt] is the greatest songwriter that ever lived—a phenomenal storyteller,” they both agree.
    As we order another round, an inebriated woman wends her way to our table to announce her name and the fact that she is 42 years old. Abraham entertains her while the rest of us go on with our conversation, and after a while, he raises his voice—“You’re 43? You were 42 when I started talking to you!”
    Does it matter? To her, she’s telling the god’s honest truth. pulse

G. Ningroy play with a full backing band, Sat., Jan. 25 at the 400 Bar. 9 p.m. $5. Toast and Jam and Martin Devaney also play. 400 Cedar Ave. S., Mpls. 612-332-2903.