I don’t know you all, but I can feel the length of this extended quarantine in my body. I feel a devastating sadness in the middle of every month, completely separate from my period (which means I get to feel it twice a month. Hooray!) Like many of you, I hit my pandemic wall this past week as the 11th month of hanging out on my couch. The Good Graces’ new single, “Stopped Making Plans,” arrived at just the right time: a gentle lamentation for everything we’ve lost in 2020 — and are likely to lose in 2021.
Drummer-turned-songwriter Kim Ware started the Good Graces on a whim in 2006, after purchasing a beat up, old acoustic guitar she named Buzzy at the Lakewood Antiques Market in Atlanta. The songs quickly poured out of her, melodic stories of heartache and hope, set to three chords that she often didn’t know the name of. Since then, Ware and tGG have toured the east coast multiple times; paid musical visits to Texas, over to California, through the midwest; and showcased at such festivals as 30A, NXNE, and LEAF, where Ware was a finalist in the NewSong Singer-Songwriter Competition in 2019.
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| Photo by John McNicholas |
In spite of the song’s title, Ware has been staying busy during the pandemic: in March 2020, she launched Kimono My House with a friend. A “virtual venue” on Facebook that was intended to keep Atlanta-area musicians connected despite isolation, the group quickly grew to include over 7K members from all over the world. She also recently launched a podcast, “Quarantuned With the Good Graces.” With a new episode every week, the conversation-style podcast also focuses on staying connected and creative, despite what life throws at you.
Ware is currently working on recording her 6th full-length album, with producer Jerry Kee of Duck-Kee Studio in Mebane, NC
“This is very much my pandemic song. But it didn’t start that way,” Ware writes to Adobe & Teardrops. “I sat down to write a song for a songwriters’ group I’m part of; the prompt was ‘foreign language’ so my mind went to other countries. Started thinking about travel plans that some friends of mine had made back in late 2019, but of course they never came to fruition. I’m a natural planner and it’s so out of my nature to not be looking forward, planning the next show, vacation, or even the next restaurant where my husband and I will go eat. Now that I’ve got that song out and into the world, I’m writing things that are a bit more upbeat, but I think it was pretty important for me to get all of that out, in some way. ”