Theirs is one of the enduring — and endearing — love stories in Marin County rock. Singer-songwriters Monroe and April Grisman celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary in April, no small feat for a business notoriously tough on relationships.
“Unbelievable,” she says and giggles. “It’s amazing that we’ve loved each other as much as we do for this long.”
As they talked about their long marriage and their lives in music, the Grismans sat across from one another in the spacious Novato studio where she gives vocal lessons and he rehearses with his band, Petty Theft, the popular Tom Petty tribute group. For most of their marriage, they operated under the assumption that the secret to staying together was avoiding too much togetherness. Over the decades, he was in his bands and she was in hers. Although both are prolific songwriters, they had never written songs together.
“I don’t know why, but I always wanted to keep our careers separate,” she says. “We’re both musicians doing our own thing. Just like when we played softball — I’m on this team and you’re on that one.”
That all changed with the pandemic, when they suddenly found themselves dealing with a kind of forced togetherness.
“In 30 years, we had never written any music together,” he says. “But during that period when we were stuck at home and there were no gigs, what are you going to do? We needed an outlet.”
Once they put their heads together musically, the result astounded them both.
“I couldn’t even conceive of writing with Monroe,” she says. “But when we got together to write, it was just a natural melding of energy. The new songs would just show up and develop.”
They unveiled some of their first songs, “Yellow Brick Road” and “Watcha Gonna Do,” on “Notes for Votes,” a video series by the booking and production company Magnolia Roads in 2020.
They soon found that there was no shortage of topical material to write songs about. The news was full of Black Lives Matter protests against police brutality after the murder of George Floyd, controversy over COVID vaccines and blue state-red state conflict around the 2020 presidential election. For April Grisman, the daughter of a Black mother and White father, the racial animosity in the country came a little too close to home.
“During that time, there was so much unrest that I was getting harassed a lot because of the color of my skin,” she says. “I’d walk down the street in Novato and I’d have people yell at me to go back to Mexico. They threw rocks at me. Grown men wanted to fight me.”
The racism she experienced inspired one of their new songs, “Neighborhood,” and influenced another, “Exposure.” Describing their music as a blend of Americana, soul, reggae and rock, they’ve begun recording basic tracks at King Tide Studio in Sausalito with the goal of releasing their first album.
They’ll be performing many of their new songs as well as some popular covers at a May 31 dinner show at Rancho Nicasio, backed by singers Loralee Christensen and Allyson Paige, keyboardist Raliegh Neal, bassist Paul Olguin and drummer Lex Razon.
Marin guitarist Josh Zee, who plays with Monroe Grisman in the AC/DC cover band AZ/DZ, describes the Grismans as “Marin music royalty.”
There’s a reason for that. They’re both children of the hippie rock and underground art scene that flourished in Marin after the Summer of Love in the late ’60s and ’70s.
Monroe Grisman’s dad is David Grisman, one of the greatest mandolinists of all time, who named him after Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass. His mother, Harmony, is also a musician and music teacher living in West Marin. As a kid, Monroe Grisman thought nothing of celebrity guitarists like Jerry Garcia, Doc Watson and Tony Rice as regular visitors to his dad’s Mill Valley house and home recording studio. To him, Garcia was just kindly “Uncle Jerry.” But it wasn’t until he and a classmate skipped their eighth-grade graduation dance at Mill Valley Middle School to go see Van Halen at the Oakland Coliseum that he picked up the guitar in earnest with dreams of rock stardom.
“That blew my mind,” he says. “I said, ‘I want to do that.’ I started taking guitar lessons and that stuck.”
April Grisman’s father, the late Fairfax rock poster artist Pat Ryan, was a co-founder of the Artista gang, a collective of hippie artists that produced concerts in the ’80s by Santana, Huey Lewis and the News, the New Riders of the Purple Sage and other major bands. She remembers going to her father’s studio after school to hang with Alton Kelley, Stanley Mouse, Victor Moscoso and other famous San Francisco poster artists. Her mother, Cyretta, was a soul singer and well-known personality in Fairfax. She died in 2016.
“It makes sense that we ended up together because we came from similar backgrounds and cultures,” Monroe Grisman says. “I could flow with her scene and she with mine.”
They became a couple after a meet-cute scenario worthy of a Hollywood rom-com. They had never laid eyes on each other before they started competing for the same band, the early ‘90s funk metal group Psychefunkapus, to play at their birthday parties, her 20th and his 21st. Since their birthdays were only a day apart and the band couldn’t play them both, they ended up having a joint birthday bash.
Before she’d met her future husband, though, her attitude was: “I’m not going to have party with some dude I don’t know.” But after he walked into an organizational meeting for the party in a hip-looking pea coat and John Lennon sunglasses, her tune changed. “I thought, oh, man, I’ll have a party with him.”
Their wedding was also quite the scene. They said their vows on the picturesque Muir Beach Overlook with the sparkling Pacific behind them. Monroe Grisman’s dad performed at the reception at the Stinson Beach Community Center. It was such a happening that half of the 200 guests were party crashers. No problem.
“It was beautiful,” she says.
The Grismans are the parents of twins, a son, Miles, and a daughter, Aliya, 25. Miles Grisman is finishing paramedic training to become a firefighter and Aliya Grisman is working in the music business in Los Angeles. Both are talented musically and perform with their parents in the SoulJah Family Band, a reggae group that includes April Grisman’s sister, Amber, also a singer, and her husband, guitarist Tal Morris.
In their lives together, the Grismans have managed to carve out a living as prominent members of the Marin music community. She teaches singing, does recording session work and sings with various local bands, including the 85’s, a group Monroe Grisman formed with fellow 1985 Tamalpais High graduates to play ’80s hits. In a career highlight, she sang backup for Irene Cara at Madison Square Garden.
Monroe Grisman had his best shot at breaking onto the national stage with American Drag, promising rockers that formed in 2004, released two independent albums, headlined Slim’s and the Great American Music Hall, and were generating buzz from record companies before unceremoniously breaking up.
Discouraged, he considered giving up music.
“I asked my family, ‘Am I being a poser? Should I start doing something else?’” he remembers. “They said, ‘No, you should keep doing what you love.’”
After the demise of American Drag, Petty Theft came along needing a guitar player, and Monroe Grisman signed on with them just as the wave for tribute bands was beginning to crest. The band has gone on to become a top club and concert draw, playing to sold-out houses in the Bay Area and regularly touring the Western states. His day job is vice president of business development for a small product design company specializing in jewelry and collectibles for clients that include Queen, U2, Tori Amos and Metallica.
And now, after 30 years of marriage, the Grismans are embarking on a project that has them excited about their future together, not just as a married couple, but as a performing and songwriting duo.
“The good thing about us not writing together until now is that we’ve matured so much in our experiences,” he says.
“I’ve gone from, ‘I’ll never work with him, I’ll never do a project with him,’ to this,” she says, smiling at her husband. “That’s my best friend. I feel very fortunate.”
• Details: Monroe and April Grisman headline a dinner show at 7:30 p.m. May 31 at Rancho Nicasio at 1 Old Rancheria Road in Nicasio. Tickets are $20, not including dinner. For dinner reservations, call 415-662-2219. To get tickets, go to ranchonicasio.com. The Grismans will also perform June 9 on the Fairfax Festival Ecofest Stage.
Contact Paul Liberatore at p.liberatore@comcast.net
