Granville Automatic can celebrate a successful KickStarter campaign tomorrow.
With more than 24 hours to go, the folk acoustic duo has already exceeded the goal of raising $5,000 toward their next album.
Elizabeth Elkins and Vanessa Olivarez of Granville Automatic.
Granville Automatic is vocalist Vanessa Olivarez, from Season 2 of American Idol, and guitarist Elizabeth Elkins.
They released a brilliant debut studio album in 2012 and specialize in writing songs about history.
Which brings us to the new, well-timed project — songs about the Civil War — timed to coincide with its 150th anniversary and designed to draw attention to battlefields that are being lost to urban sprawl.
The duo wrote most of the songs last year when they were chosen as the Composers in Residence at the Seaside (Fla.) Institute’s Escape to Create program.
The job now — record studio versions of those songs, then visit the battlefields, or areas where the battles were fought, and record live versions of the songs, complete with a video.
When I spoke with Vanessa earlier this year, she said she and Elizabeth have been performing together for more than three years and that the idea behind Granville Automatic was to do “story songs, things people can really relate to.”
A song about the wild mustangs in the West prompted them to write more songs about history.
“The cool thing about history, is you never run out of material,” Vanessa said. “There are just endless stories, endless tales. And it’s nice to have things to write about that are true and actually happened instead of writing about the same love story over and over again.”
The goal of the Civil War project: “to educate people about urban sprawl and trying to really preserve these battlefields and make people sort of refocus their perspective on preservation and history.”
The duo has already recorded live versions of songs about the Battle of Atlanta and Glorieta Pass, New Mexico. About seven more songs will follow.
According to the KickStarter campaign — to which you can still contribute — the album release is anticipated next March.
“Glorieta”
“Coppenhill”
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