Album Notes

"This music is like The Violent Femmes and Buddy Holly meet The Velvet Underground "
Christian Clay
- Beat City

"I call him [Jeff Grimes] a creative genius"
Gene Astadan
- Something out of Nothing (internet blog)

The music of Jeff Grimes and the Broken Strings is fun, intelligent, lonely, uplifting, rocking yet sweet. You can dance, cry, laugh and make out to his CD "Violent Girl". His quirky writing is image rich and reflective of his influences. Bands like Love, Velvet Underground, Nick Drake, The Germs and The Byrds.

The nucleus of the Broken Strings is a group of four talented musicians:

Brent Harding - upright bass,vocals.Brent,a versatile bassist and singer,has recorded and/or toured with Mike Ness/Social Distortion,Deke Dickerson,The Lucky Stars and Carl Sunny Leyland among others.Brent is also a craftsperson who makes custom pool cues for McCorder Cues prized among players and collectors around the world.

Ian Conley - guitar,vocals,sometimes drums.Ian is a young,energetic and creative left-handed guitar player who learned to play upside down on a right-handed guitar while listening to The Stooges.His former band The Switch,a three piece,was,pure low-fi rock n'roll and put out a split 12inch with The Rattlesnakes.He also plays bass in the LA band Slowcoach.

Cesar Tafoya - percussion,twelve and six-string guitar.Cesar's original drum kit for The Broken Strings was a dog biscuit box,copper pan and tambourine.This set up is best heard on the song "Irene."Cesar divides his time between two homes: Ventura, California and Stockholm,Sweden.

Jeff Grimes - vocals,guitar,harmonica.Singer songwriter Grimes,formerly of the acoustic punk duo The Jacketmen,lives in Ventura,CA. A graduate of Naropa University,he founded the creative writing program at Camarillo State Mental Hospital.He is currently finishing up a book of short stories to be published by Rocketship books.