I went to a Lower East Side venue a few months ago to see my friend’s band play, but a singer named John McGrew that came on later upstaged them and everyone else on the bill that night. Brooklyn singer-songwriter McGrew’s fearless vocals and showmanship won me over immediately, as did his backing band the SitBacks’ spontaneous brand of indie-folk and pop-gospel. I signed up for the group’s mailing list, and later got the chance to sit down with McGrew for a quick meal in Soho. 

At our meeting, the 27-year-old, slightly neurotic Oxford, Ohio native is a bit nervous—this is his first interview after all. Wearing short, dark brown hair, thin-framed glasses, and torn blue jeans, he’s wolfing down a beer and a cheeseburger between recording sessions at a nearby studio, The Magic Shop.

He tells me that since I saw him play he has renamed his band Apollo Run. “We just wanted to move forward as a band rather than just ‘John McGrew and the …’,” he says of the group, which also contains Graham Fisk on drums, Emil McGloin on guitar, and Jeff Kerestes on bass. “We considered just ‘The SitBacks,’ but we felt that name might trap us into one sound, which might stifle our development as musicians.”

In other words, though some of their music is the kind you might “sit back” and enjoy, much of it is of the “throw down your beer stein and boogie woogie” variety.

Plus there’s the fact that McGrew is a bit of an intergalactic nerd. “I’m obsessed with space. It’s actually kind of unhealthy,” he explains. He adds that Apollo Run uses a retro-futuristic theme in its logo, with a Blade Runner font complemented by pictures of a phonograph and hot air balloons. Again, this plays into the band’s schizophrenic dynamic, which can be heard on their new EP, Make It Go Boom. It is a smorgasbord of old-world instrumentation in the style of Zach Condon’s band Beirut, hand-clapping, foot-stomping gospel, and trendy, heart-on-sleeve rock numbers.

Seeing as how singer/guitarist/pianist/trumpeter McGrew has an almost innate gift for melodies and has been making music for years, it’s a bit strange that he has yet to release a full-length album. He was close, however. In 2005, he signed to a New York label called Shark Meat, but terminated the contract after a sharp disagreement with the label’s vision for his album’s production.

“We were going in different directions with the music, and we both recognized that we might want to move in our separate ways before it all blew up in our faces,” he says. “All of the drums and bass were ‘canned’ or fake, and we didn’t have access to a drum set, so I made all of the drum beats on a keyboard. It felt inhuman, and too clean.

“All of the instruments on the Apollo Run EP are real,” he continues. “I am sure there will be a time when we experiment with more digital sounds, but we hope to never use ‘canned’ or fake instruments.”

This wouldn’t be McGrew’s last traumatic encounter with the music industry. The year previous he had taken a job in Sony BMG’s new technology department, and was quickly growing uncomfortable as an independent songwriter working for a big, bad major.

He grew disenchanted with the company’s vision when it came to squelching music piracy and promoting DRM. “I’m pro-indie label,” he says. “I hear their concerns as a big corporation, but sometimes I think they make wrong decisions. That’s one of the reasons I left, because some of their guys have the opposite philosophy than I do. You can’t fault a company for trying to protect its product from being consumed for free, but you can hold them responsible for not accepting a new digital landscape, taking a loss, and moving forward by embracing rather than litigating. Easier said than done, I am sure. But when it comes down to it, my perhaps naïve opinion is that both hardcore [music] pirates and old-fashioned music executives have it wrong.”

These philosophical differences helped McGrew recently decide it was time to quit his job to pursue music full time. The first thing he did was teach kids music at a camp in Maine, staying at a cabin in the woods and working with 11- to 17-year-olds.

Since his return, he has gotten a taste of life with no steady income. He has accepted the fact that the changing paradigm of the music business means he probably won’t be signing a huge record contract anytime soon. “I’m prepared to do the ramen thing for a while,” he says, adding that he would even live out of a van down by the river, in the style of Chris Farley’s famous Saturday Night Live character. “I wouldn’t mind being Matt Foley if it meant I could travel and play my music.”

Apollo Run just acquired a manager and are now putting together an LP, and they hope to build a larger fanbase by touring extensively. McGrew says they are concerned with spontaneity above all else in their live shows, and never play live tracks the same way twice. “There have been times when we hadn’t even rehearsed songs. I just told the band, ‘B flat minor, D major, G major, F sharp major.’ When I nod, then we just come in big.

“We’re not trying to be a jam band, but we are trying to push our comfort levels,” he elaborates, something which seems to be true in both McGrew’s personal and professional life. “Touring is as exciting as outer space to me.”

When speaking with him, it’s hard not to get swept up in his giddy enthusiasm and be excited for his financially risky endeavor. “Life is too short to be dealing with anti-piracy vendors, whose methodologies and business practices you do not agree with or respect, when you could be slumming it in order to be singing at the top of your lungs,” he says. Even if that means eating ramen and living in a van down by the river.

(Apollo Run’s EP is available at the iTunes Store and for free at the group’s web site, www.apollorun.com.)

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

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