Idol Chatter & Voice Views

The twosome that is Granville Automatic have released a new video for their Civil War project.

To catch folks up, Granville Automatic includes Vanessa Olivarez from Season 2 of Idol and guitarist Elizabeth Elkins.

And they’re busy recording songs about key Civil War battles with plans to release a double album — one album of studio versions of the songs and one album of live performances, recorded on or near where the battles occurred.

“An Army Without Music” — the name of the project and album — is perfectly timed since the country is still marking the 150th anniversary of the war.

The latest video is for a song called “Grancer Harrison,” about a Scottish immigrant who owned a large farm in Kingston, Alabama, and used to throw large parties there every Saturday night in the years leading up to the war.

Vanessa explained the Civil War link when I interviewed her about this project a year ago; Grancer lost four of five sons to the war. Two fought in the Battle of Mobile.

And Grancer was apparently quite the character. He asked to be buried in his beloved feather bed, with his clogging shoes and fiddle. He’s since become known as one of the “13 Ghosts of Alabama.”

Granville Automatic filmed the video at his grave site in Coffee County, Alabama. Though if you keep watching the video after the singing ends, you’ll see that his ghost didn’t make an appearance when Vanessa and Elizabeth visited.

“That’s sort of the fun song of the project,” Vanessa said, “because the Civil War isn’t exactly a party.”

You can check out two previous videos from the project — “Copenhill” and “Glorieta” — on the Granville Automatic website.

And be sure to check out their previous self-titled studio album by listening to the songs in the music player on the homepage. “Granville Automatic” was one of my favorite Idol-related albums released in 2012.

Now, the video for “Grancer Harrison” …