“Good Gone Bad” by Satchel Grande | Song Premiere

 

   

Tracing the musical branches of “Good Gone Bad,” the second track off Satchel Grande’s new album What She Wants, back to it’s root proves complicated.

Does it begin with the unwavering synthesizer chords that open the track and persist through the much of the song’s six and a half minutes, or with the syncopated horns, conversing back and forth with band leader Chris Klemmensen’s voice? That same instrumental rhythm trades over to the keyboards periodically, which could have equally been the germination point.

Klemmensen, who writes all the music for the dectet, says he begins with a hook, establishing which instrumentation best suits each particular case.

Maybe finding the nucleus isn’t so necessary, though.

As closely as each part works in the track, it’s hard to parse out the core structure. If “Good Gone Bad” is a tree, it’s most likely a carefully pruned blue juniper, where each branch grows upward, together, into one cohesive shape. The layers are dense and the trunk, the main idea, is somewhere in the middle of all them, but to look too closely for it would be to miss the work itself, the whole tree.

Satchel Grande debuts What She Wants this weekend at The Waiting Room in Omaha on Friday night with Buck Bowen and at Vega in Lincoln on Saturday night with Tatonka.

It’s a familiar release from a group that’s been working long enough to be confident in where they want their music to land.

Klemmensen, now in his 30s, has been writing Satchel Grande music since 2006. He says he’s found that the older a musician gets, the less they’re concerned with reception.

“If you’re still in a band at this point, you’re doing it because your love of the music. It’s not going to stop if it’s not well-received. When you’re a young man, you’re hoping it will pull you out of your day job. When you’re older and you’re doing it, you’re doing it strictly out of love.”

Satchel Grande, though, has found positive reception, in large part for invigorating live shows, bolstered by the band’s appearance.

Klemmensen, who sports large sideburns and a moustache, as well as aviator sunglasses at most shows, acknowledges a definite visual appeal to the band. The energy, the horns and appearance has often led to Stachel Grande’s being labeled a funk band.

“There’s definitely some meanness to it,” he says. “It’s pretty easy to peg it (as funk) if you want to, if you’re lazy. Dig a little deeper and it’s actually much more simple.”

Ultimately, he says, Satchel Grande releases pop music.

Still, genres of the kind, be they funk music or dance-pop, run the risk of suffering between live performance and records, with tracks falling flat on an album that in concert are animated and energized.

With “Good Gone Bad” and What She Wants, Satchel Grande has managed to effectively capture the spirit of the live performance. For that, Klemmensen says the band’s producer and sound engineer, Jeremy Garrett, deserves credit.

Andy Kammerer, who plays keys, percussion and sings in the band notes there was a more conscious effort on this release to capture the band’s live energy for the album.

“Usually, the albums kind of come to life when we play them live,” he says. “But this one, I’d say, is right there.”

Listen to “Good Gone Bad” below.

Jacob Zlomke is Hear Nebraska's staff writer. Reach him at jacobz@hearnebraska.org.