This Saturday night, the relatively new Memphis alt-rock group, Gasoline Grace, will celebrate the release of its debut full-length CD, Hearts on Fire, with a show at Murphy’s.
The band — a trio comprised of longtime local music scene veterans Melanie Isaksen (bass, vocals), Robert Allen Parker (guitar, vocals), and Angela Horton (drums) — came together after a chance meeting at the Delta Girls Rock Camp in 2008, which Horton helps organize and where all three serve as volunteer counselors.
“After moving back to Memphis to be closer to my family, I wasn’t really interested in going out and playing music right away,” says Isaksen, who returned to the area in 2004 after several years of living and working in Chicago.
“I also have a personal desire to use my experiences and abilities to help others in whatever I do. I figure, if you’re not helping someone else with your efforts, what’s the point, really? So I got involved with a local music camp who’s goal was empowering young girls through the medium of rock and roll music. This gave me the chance to use my background of teaching and working with at-risk youth, as well as sharing my musical experience in a positive way. That is how I met my bandmates. I would say our hearts are in the same place, and that’s what eventually led us to work together musically.”
After hitting it off at the camp that summer, the trio started regularly jamming on cover songs for fun in Horton’s living room. But by late 2009, things had really started to gel and original songs began to pile up. And so, Gasoline Grace became a working live band.