Green River Ordinance
With the initials G.R.O., Green River Ordinance has a lot of room to create puns with their name. From their charity site The Hope GROs to their Kickstarter campaign from 2010 Ready. Set. GRO!
With their newest album Under Fire out earlier this year and a few west coast tour dates coming up in June, the band is preparing for a busier fall. I chatted with lead singer Josh Jenkins about their charity site, their live show and how it all began. Check out the interview and tour dates below and check back June 7th for photos from the concert!
Arin: What got you really interested in making music a career?
Josh: Well, that’s a great question. We started out in high school just doing it because we enjoyed it. We loved writing, we loved playing, it was such a fun thing to do and as time progressed into college it just became more of a reality for us to just pursue it as a career. We were a few years into college and said let’s give this a try, let’s see what happens, and that just kind of kept continuing on and progressed. So I think it started from a place of really loving to play music and loving to write and feeling like we had something to share and say, and that was the driving force behind it.
A: The band seems to do a pretty good job of interacting with fans through social networks, but who is the biggest into social networking out of all of you?
J: It’s probably Jamie; he’s the most socially aware I would say, as far as using twitter, taking pictures. I often times, I don’t have a personal twitter and I just forget to use twitter — I have to be reminded to be tweety [laughs].
A: Your website, The Hope GROs (thehopegros.com), provides fans with an opportunity to buy some of your music and send all the proceeds to a charity that each of you picked. How did you choose yours?
J: I picked mine, International Justice Mission, just through a friend. A friend kind of educated me about what they were doing so I did research and and read up on them and really got an understanding of what they’ve done, and it just seemed like a great fit. We’ve been able to do a few shows for them, and it’s really cool to have people get excited about the charities we’ve chosen and see how they are personally affected by it. Like Joshua’s is Autism and having people that either know someone who has autism or someone who actually has Autism, reach out to us and thank us for doing it is just really cool to see that play itself out.
A: What prompted you guys to do a project like this where each of you have a cause and let the fans give back to charity through your music?
J: I think it comes back to the reason why we really do what we do and wanting out music to not just be about us playing music, but really helping people and hopefully through a song or giving away a song can bring about joy to somebody or a situation to bring relief. To us it’s something we always try to do — to use the music for something bigger than ourselves; so that was just an idea that was born out of that desire that allowed us to use what we’ve been given and everything we’ve been blessed with to really bless others and hopefully point our fans to other things that are going on in the world and things that need to be given attention to.
A: What can people coming to the west coast dates of the Under Fire tour expect to see and what is your live show like?
J: Well we have a lot of live animals that we bring on stage while we play and it’s really kind of like a zoo environment; we just try to do something different. Totally kidding [laughs]. I would say we like to create an environment where people can have a good time. Not every one of our songs is like a happy song, but we like to create an environment where there’s an interaction between the fans and us on stage. We don’t wanna always just be about us performing; we wanna have dialogue and really create an environment where people feel like they’re getting a show that’s fun and there’s parts they can sing along. We have lights that we bring with us that are kind of part of the show so just hopefully people will get an hour and a half, two hours of escape from whatever troubles their day and hopefully have a good time.
A: Do you have a favorite venue in one of the cities you’ve played or one that will always have a special memory?
J: I think hometown is always a pretty special experience just because we grew up playing small rooms and then you move up to the bigger rooms so that’s always like a given. Like last time we played at the House of Blues in Dallas it was like 1500 people, and to get to see that and be a part of that? We grew up in Dallas playing for 50 people so it’s kind of amazing to play shows like that. That is always a sweet experience. One of our favorite places to ever play that we’ve only played once was Red Rocks — which was incredible, in Colorado. It’s beautiful! We opened up for Switchfoot and the Goo Goo Dolls there so that would be a venue that we would love to play again someday.
A: What can people expect to see from you guys throughout the rest of this year?
J: Well, this summer we’re doing some radio stuff. We just released a song called ‘Heart of Me’ to radio so we’re going to be out doing some shows through Aloft Hotels. They’re sponsoring a little tour of ours and this will be after the west coast run. We’ll do a little acoustic tour where we play 45 minutes and play at these aloft hotel events all partnered up with radio events — so that will be July, and then September we’re going to hit the road again, so we’ll come back in the fall and do another headlining run, partner with somebody else and get back out there because it’s still the early part of this record and these shows we’ve just played people are still learning the songs so it’s exciting to get out and hopefully get back to some of the cities we just visited as well.
A: Is there a song that the crowd always sings along to and what is that moment like?
J: Oh man. One of the new songs, it’s a song called ‘New Day,’ and on this tour it’s been really fun to see people sing along. We kind of break down in the middle of the song where it’s basically like a Hallelujah part like ‘Oh I need a hallelujah’ and really just seeing people sing along with that is pretty magical. Of the newer songs on tour that one’s always pretty fun to play. It’s always so cool to see people singing along and anytime people are moved by what we are saying, it’s a pretty awesome experience.
