Music Notes by Mark Jordan Family Fun at Fuller It's easy to forget about T.O. Fuller State Park, hidden away as it is in a corner of southwest Memphis. Most people go as children to explore the Chucalissa Indian village or buy a bamboo dart blower, but they usually don't return until they're parents themselves and have to bring their own children. Well, the state park officials who run Fuller want to change that and are working to reinvent Fuller as a year-round center for family activities. Their efforts will kick off this Saturday with FullerFest '97, sponsored by T.O. Fuller State Park, the Tennessee state park system, Chucalissa Museum, and the Center for Southern Folklore. The free festival will run from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. and will feature arts, crafts, native American dancing, the Riverview Community Center majorettes, the Golden Highsteppers, and the Georgia Avenue Double Dutch jump-ropers. Music will be provided by Keith Brown (acoustic blues), Leisa Su B (jazz), Kelley Hurt and the Memphis Groovetet (jazz), the Violinetts (gospel), Joyce Cobb and Cool Heat (jazz/blues), the Angelic Voices of Faith (gospel), and Blue Silk (R&B). To get to T.O. Fuller State Park, drive south on Third to Mitchell Road, take a right, and follow the signs. New Stuff In The Bins We've been kind of slack on reporting the latest local CD releases (Excuse us for taking a vacation, sheesh), so here goes: Big Ass Truck guitarist Robbie Grant has just released Unleavened Bread, his first solo record on North Carolina's Yep Roc Records. It's a surprisingly eclectic, garage-ish affair, drawing on influences that don't come through so much on Grant's B.A.T. work, including, notably, Neil Young and punk. Little Rock-based Ho-Hum's new release Sanduleak is a collection of smart, tuneful punky pop that is a worthy follow-up to last year's wonderful Local. Memphis Juke from Snake Hips (a.k.a. Mark Harrison) lives up to its name with a raw, unfiltered sound that makes you feel as if you're in the studio with Alex Chilton and Chris Bell circa 1972. Memphis' Ecko Records has two new records out: Chuck Roberson's Meet Me Tonight and The Best of Ecko Records, Volume 1, which is a great introduction to this contemporary soul label's roster of artists, which includes Ollie Nightingale, Barbara Carr, and Lee "Shot" Williams. A band that doesn't get nearly enough attention at home (from those of us in the media, at any rate) is Another Society. So it may surprise locals to know that this heavy-metal quintet has a small but steadily growing following across the country. Their second CD for California's PC Music, Blood Wrong, shows why: These guys play strong, dark, convincing hard rock in the mode of early Metallica. Cool metal at a time when metal isn't very cool. Memphian Scott Sudbury's Static On My Radio features a surefire formula: No tricks, no posing, no pretension, just heart-on-your-sleeve rock-and-roll with a slight rootsy feel. This Rockingchair Records production is all the more impressive because Sudbury played everything on it but the drums. And oh yeah, some woman named Starr put out a record last week, too.

Traveling the Gran Highway Knoxville's Gran Torino is keeping rhythm-and-blues alive on the road and in the clubs. by Mark Jordan runge. Hip Hop. Electronica. Bass and Drum. Jungle. Alt Country. Dub. There are dozens of labels for the different genres of music young bands play today, but the guys in Knoxville's Gran Torino prefer one from the old school. "R&B -- that's what we do," says Gran Torino guitarist and lead singer Chris Ford. "We love everything R&B, from Maxwell and Jamiroquai to Al Green and Marvin Gaye." Of course, this is an octet of young twentysomethings; we're not exactly talking Hank Ballard and the Midnighters here. Gran Torino throws in plenty of other styles into the mix -- soul, funk, jazz -- which betray something less than a pure R&B upbringing. But the final product is undeniably danceable, so rhythm-and-blues is as good an all-encompassing term as any. Gran Torino was formed a little over two years ago by a group of University of Tennessee-Knoxville students and played its first gig opening for Memphis' Big Ass Truck there. Besides Ford, the group includes Dexter Murphy on trombone and keyboards, Pete Alexander and Scott Pederson on trumpets, saxophonist Jason Thompson, bassist Todd Overstreet, guitarist Stephen Decker, and Whit Pfohl on drums. Since first getting together, the band has quickly built a large following, not just in Knoxville but all across the eastern seaboard. The band spends more than half the month on the road, traveling in their recently acquired recreational vehicle. An RV may sound a little opulent for a band playing the club circuit, but when you're an eight-member R&B band, you need a little more room than most bands. "We work really hard on touring," Ford says. "We concentrate hard on playing a lot in about six states, but really we play from New York all the way down to Florida." All this time on the road has obviously turned Gran Torino, already made up of some very gifted musicians, into a very tight band known for their jamming live shows. So it was only appropriate that when it came time to put out their first CD earlier this year, Gran Torino decide to release a live recording, this year's Live At the Chameleon Club, recorded at a show in Atlanta. According to Ford, however, the band hadn't intended to release a CD -- live or otherwise -- at all. "We didn't even know the show was being recorded," Ford says. "The sound guy in this club had a [Digital Audio Tape machine] hooked up and he had a thing where he would tape the band without telling them and then try to sell you the tape for $35 or something. We liked the tape so we figured why not go ahead and put it out?" The decision was apparently a good one, seeing as how Live At The Chameleon Club has sold more than 5,000 copies to date. Now Gran Torino is preparing for the release this month of its second disc, titled One. "Yeah, I hate trying to come up with titles, so we're just going to do the Chicago thing and number all our records," says Ford. For the second CD, the band decided to forgo the live approach in favor of the more controlled and precise atmosphere of the studio. For the exacting Ford the result is a record that he feels is much better than the relatively sloppy live disc. "We hadn't been together very long when we recorded Live At The Chameleon Club," Ford says. "We're obviously a lot tighter now. If we made a live record today, it would be a lot better." With their first polished studio effort coming out, the obvious thing to do would for Gran Torino to make the big push to sign with a major label. But Ford says the band is in no rush to make it big, preferring to get it right instead. "We try not to worry about [getting signed to a major label] too much," he says. "We figure if we can make a living playing, we can hold off on the record deals and wait until we're ready and we can get a deal that's right for us."