I've Got Something To Tell You

Michael Grace Jr., Gets Personal With The Secret History

MICHAEL GRACE JR., songwriter for The Secret History, is your classic indie pop O.G. As the former leader of defunct cult heroes My Favorite, he’s been demonstrating how to turn somber theatrics into songs for years and shows no sign of letting up.

I met up with Grace at Williamsburg’s Blackbird Café for a happy hour chat about what it’s like to be 10 years early on indie pop trends, mysticism, zombies, Brooklyn folk music and the baggage of modernism. For The Secret History’s material, Grace is joined on vocals by Lisa Ronson (Mick’s daughter) and Erin Dermody, as well as the core unit from My Favorite. To start, how exactly does one pull enough weight to convince the daughter of a rock legend to sing?

“I put classified ads in a couple places,” Grace explains, sipping a Sapporo. “She told me she saw it in the Voice. I was hoping to tap into some 20th-century mysticism. Kind of old school, right?” Indeed. There’s a lot about Grace where this “old school,” pre-social-media ethos would apply. From his 14-year stint leading My Favorite, he’s a road and studio veteran that knows how to let a song breathe and jangle on its own terms. Check the deadpan “My Life With The Living Dead” for something reminiscent of The Smiths or “Johnny Anorak” to take you back to Belle & Sebastian before all the freaky Christian stuff. These tracks aren’t exactly dead ringers, but they do fit well alongside their influential forefathers.

“In essence, music is our desire to have one person tell a story with a melody that you can remember against our modern situation where we carry the baggage of the past 150 years around,” Grace says. “There’s one part of you that wants to be commenting on and reconstructing garbage and another part that just sort of taps into something pure that’s been done the same way by singers in the streets. You synthesize these two and you get something. That’s my main way of thinking about the work I do. I don’t want to belong to the school of ironists.”

The Secret History’s first record, The World That Never Was, features a wellhoned combination of pure, naturalist folk songwriting and repurposed B-movie garbage. Instead of openly harping about sex with ladies, Grace goes for “Sex With Ghosts”—an odd cinematic flip that still references the Chelsea Hotel and features a sparse, beautifully produced combination of gospel organ, post-Marr guitar and fillladen drums. I’ll vote for this album to replace the American Idiot musical when it finally runs its course.

“The universe is haunted,” Grace continues when asked why the sex had to be with ghouls. “There were creatures and goblins around every corner. I set out to do a sort of monster rock opera around that time and followed through on it. You go through history and see this repeated series of demons that have motivated people. I find it hilarious that we’re entering a new dark age of interest in vampires and zombies. I think it represents the utter fear of what the hell the world is gonna look like. We’re reverting to extreme superstition. I’m happy to usher that in.”

Yet, back in reality, Grace has to contend with his own influence on a generation of Brooklynites—most notably shining pop bands like Pains of Being Pure at Heart. He wants to remain authentic to these people and his fans, yet realizes the way to do that is through craft rather than simply posing. For every 25 songwriters that don’t know what a bridge is, there’s only one of Grace’s caliber who can create a pastiche of so many things while sounding like the song has been plucked from a field.

“The idea of making folk music for Brooklyn in 2010 really appeals to me,” he concludes. “To try to achieve that authenticity requires a mix of postmodernism, mysticism and outright arrogance. If you combine all these different currents but stay charged with magic, that makes folk music something that people go back to. God willing that could possibly be true about some of the stuff we’ve done.” >>THE SECRET HISTORY June 30, The Bell House, 149 7th St. (betw. 2nd & 3rd Aves.), Brooklyn, 718-643-6510; 7:30, $10.

Amazing Grace: The Secret History.