Grace (rock band)
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Grace is a rock band, based in Shepherd's Bush in London. The band consists of JP (John Paul) Jones on vocals and guitar, Sam Swallow on keyboards, Ben Lumsden on bass, James Hayto on guitar and Chris Hutchings on drums.
Grace was formed from a partial merger of two bands. In 1999, while a first-year music student at Clare College, Cambridge, Sam Swallow collaborated with friends to produce an seven-song album, released privately as The Moon EP (after the album's title song, The Matthew Moon Song, dedicated to a certain Matthew Moon). Following the popularity of this album, Swallow consolidated a four-piece band called Weedmeter, whose musical style was an eclectic and adventurous mix of rock, funk and other highly individual elements. Weedmeter released an album called Ben in March 2001, which is preserved online despite the fact that Weedmeter is now defunct. The album's cover picture (by Timothy Moore) reveals that the eponymous Ben, subject of the title song (a mock-epic), is Ben Lumsden, who was a contemporary of the Weedmeter members at Clare College and a close friend. Lumsden was the partner of JP Jones in a farcical acoustic duo called Front Man, a name which was soon abandoned in favour of Morocco. Weedmeter and Morocco regularly appeared together, often in the fabled "Cellars" at Clare College, Cambridge, a venue that had nurtured the career of - among many others - Pete Atkin. Morocco subsequently expanded to include electric guitarist Tony Paul, and both groups experimented with guest musicians, most commonly violinist Tam Healey and violist Chris Brown. In 2001 Swallow and Lumsden independently moved to Shepherd's Bush, where they both secured positions as Anglican church organists, despite a lack of formal training. Swallow joined Morocco, and Weedmeter was disbanded. Morocco went electric, acquired a drummer and replaced its second guitarist Paul with Patrick Murdoch, also of Big Linda, and changed its name to Grace. After further personnel shifts (Murdoch was replaced by Hayto) it is now established as a mainstream rock band with a saccharine tooth.
Grace's début single, Stand Still, was released on 6th November 2006 on the Angel/EMI label. The song has been pre-released in a YouTube video posted on the band's MySpace page, along with a preview of the lyrics of three more songs, which, according to that website, will appear with it on a forthcoming album, Detours, due for release in 2007 on Gracious Records (an imprint of Angel/EMI).
