Maybe the trope of the truth-telling, rural high school rock band still together after making its first EP 10 years ago is a corny one. However, that cliche is solid, bold and pure because it rings with elements of tradition and the richness of longtime friendship.
Take The Districts.
As the one-time toast of Lititz, Lancaster County, co-founding members singer-lyricist Rob Grote and bassist-drummer Braden Lawrence (along with guitarist Pat Cassidy) got together as The Districts in 2009, released their first EP “Kitchen Songs” in 2011, and made their mark early with their rootsy, jangling “Telephone” album the following year.
“We’re far off from where we started, but we’re where we intended to be. Or at least we’re seeing it clearer,” Rob Grote once told me.
Ten years after that EP’s recorded debut, not only is the trio on its fifth album, “Great American Painting,” The Districts will ring out the old year and ring in the new at Johnny Brenda’s on Dec. 30 and 31.
“It just felt so nice to spend time with the people I care about, to have fun and try to make something good for the world,” Grote wrote as part of The Districts’ new press.
“The thing I value most in music is when an album expresses some sort of pain or frustration or hope that I also feel,” he explains. “I hope this album makes people feel like something within themselves is reflected in the wider world, and I hope that makes them feel less alone.”
Going back to their past, albums such as “Popular Manipulations,” and making people feel less alone and at one with adult struggles and shifting realities was always Grote & Co’s thing. Since the band started as teens, anyone who has stayed a Districts fan since its debut knows how they’ve grown since we grew up with them. And how no matter how impressionistic Grote can be as a lyricist, truth, justice and now the “Great American Painting” way – good or bad – is at the heart of who he is as a writer and sage.
“I definitely know what you mean about avoiding the innocence of youth before this,” Grote told me about coming up and moving on. “Because people focused on our age back then, maybe we defied it… We understand what goes on with each other and get along. We’re not kids anymore in that respect.”
Moving forward, beyond teenage years, The Districts became a part and parcel of the Philly scene just as soon as they dropped their debut album. “We fell in love with Philly as soon as we began playing shows in the city as teenagers, and feel proud and grateful to live in such a wonderful place,” he said.
Pandemics and COVID-19, of course, affected The Districts with Grote writing the bulk of its new album during his quarantine months living in a cabin in Washington state.
“While we were there, I spent some time driving near all these crazy rivers and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, and I was mesmerized by how those unspoiled landscapes really capture a timeless idea of what America is,” Grote wrote. “I’d just come from taking part in the protests in Philly and getting tear-gassed, and it felt so strange to go between those two extremes. In a way this album is asking, ‘What is the great American painting? Is it police brutality, or is it this beautiful landscape?’ And the truth is it’s all of that.”
