‘On And On And Gone’ by Gringo Star | New Album
Exclusive video premiere of ‘On And On And Gone’ by Gringo Star, taken from the latest album, ‘On And On And Gone’ out via My Anxious Mouth.
Gringo Star have made a name for themselves as one of Atlanta’s most valuable rock & roll exports, carrying the torch for hazy, psychedelic garage rock in a city primarily valued for its contributions to hip-hop. Brothers Nick and Peter Furgiuele are the constant creative force of Gringo Star, and have outlasted wave after wave of buzz bands and indie blog darlings, carving their own career path through constant reinvention and an unparalleled work ethic, amassing a loyal and enthusiastic international fanbase along the way. The band shared bills with everyone from Cat Power and Feist to The Black Angels and Weezer, not to mention tours with Wavves, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, and their Atlanta-based contemporaries Black Lips.
”As soon as I listened to the Gringo Star album, I remembered the dreams I had as a child, when I spread my wings and began to fly free. I decided to make the turtle, a long-lived, silent and tenacious animal, undertake this journey, qualities that I find in the band’s journey, which has come to a great musical maturity.” Federico Fregonese, director of the video
Though the band’s 2008 album, ’All Y’all’ serves as the start of Gringo Star’s storied career, the band’s core songwriting duo, the Furgiuele brothers, have been playing together since they were kids, born into a family with strong ties to Georgia music history. “Our grandad started out in radio in the ’40s and ’50s in Columbus, GA.,” Nick explains. “He was a huge promoter of R&B back when it was still super segregated, and he was playing black music and putting on shows with Little Stevie Wonder, James Brown, Sam Cooke & the Soul Stirrers, a lot of Gospel shows. So we grew up hearing all these stories, listening to all this music. Our grandfather was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame posthumously. And my grandma—all her photo albums are like Jackie Wilson shirtless backstage, hanging out.”
With their family’s R&B connections and their young obsession with early rock & roll, it wasn’t long before the two brothers started making music themselves. When Nick was 15 and Peter just 11, they picked up bass and drums, respectively, formed a rhythm section and joined their first garage band. “We played together in the house and messed around on a little two-track,” Nick says. “We’ve been writing songs together since before Peter was a teenager. We even played his 8th-grade dance.”
Eventually, the brothers formed Gringo Star and began the career that has come to define their last decade. ’All Y’all’ and ’Count Yer Lucky Stars’ forced the world to pay attention. 2013’s ’Floating Out To See’ found the band experimenting with producing their own records and layering more keys and strings into their compositions. 2016’s ’The Sides and In Between’ contained some of the finest songwriting of the Furgiuele’s career, and 2018’s ’Back to the City’ reinvigorated their sound with a new intensity, equally dark and shimmering. The band’s legendary live energy was captured in 2019’s album ’Controlled Burn (Live In Atlanta)’. Despite multiple personnel changes, Nick and Peter have remained steadfast in their partnership, continuing to stand by one another through thick and thin in their artistic endeavours. There’s no telling what comes next for Gringo Star, but there’s no doubt that the Furgiuele brothers will continue to write and record on their own terms. “We’ve had a lot of opportunities over the past ten years. If we had an idea about something we wanted to, we did it,” says Nick. “I can’t think of a single thing I’d change.”
Headline photo: Peter Furgiuele
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