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Artist
Grandpa's Ghost
12+ albums
about
Grandpa's Ghost is an experimental American band from Pocahontas, Illinois, founded in 1995. The group was founded by Ben Hanna and Bill Emerson in 1995 on the outskirts of St. Louis, Missouri, in Pocahontas & Pierron, Illinois and was initially associated with the second wave of alt-country music from the region that included Uncle Tupelo, The Bottle Rockets, Son Volt, and Wilco. The current lineup features Hanna, Emerson, and Jack Petracek. They released a trio of albums on their own Milk The Cow label in 1995 and 1996 to favorable reviews with Option magazine saying "the band hails from roughly the same geographic territory as the Uncle Tupelo/Son Volt/Wilco juggernaut, though the music tends toward the cerebral more often than the music of those bands". In 1999, the band signed to Upland Records, a label run by former SST Records co-owner Joe Carducci and ex-Black Flag/Descendents drummer Bill Stevenson. Their first album with Upland, Il Baccio, followed in 2000 and brought the band to national attention marking a shift into more experimental terrain with Jon Fine, writing in the Village Voice, describing them as "one of America's best bands". The Wire's Tom Ridge described the album as "psychedelicized Country rock...deeply fried". In 2001, Grandpa's Ghost were awarded "Best Eclectic/Uncategorizable Band" by the Riverfront Times, hailing Il Baccio as "a masterpiece of clashing chaos and inspired beauty". The band's next release was a 2CD set in 2001, Stardust and Smo
