great grand sun

Great Grand Sun is cozy and cosmic, familiar and strange. Great Grand Sun is what happens when you recognize that T. Rex started as a folk group and Lee Perry wrote perfect pop songs before setting sail on the Black Ark. The brainchild of producers Joel Mcanulty and Chris Byrd, Great Grand Sun is the result of a lifetime exploring the outer reaches and inner workings of music, of exploring the inner self and the way the ineffable can be transposed by vibrations passing through the ether.

phantom farmer

Phantom Farmer is the sound of spring flowers sprouting from red dirt, the sizzle of rain on warm pavement writ into song. Veteran Nashville auteur Joel Mcanulty probes reality with the help of Chris Byrd and Jerry Pentecost, current touring drummer for Bob Dylan. Steeped in Southern music from country to hip hop, Phantom Farmer has featured some of Nashville’s most progressive musicians including Stanton Edward, Luke Schneider, Matt Moody, and Mr Jimmy Matt Rowland.

“It really can be a fun game to try to figure out the nature of existence, and it doesn't have to be tedious or dogmatic or soul sucking.” A preacher's kid and a lifelong spiritual searcher, Joel Mcanulty has made his way back to the musical flock. A long time member of the DIY community that managed to write and sing his way in and through the mainstream music industry over the course of two and a half decades, Mcanulty's playful and poignant approach to melody has made him a familiar face in Nashville’s indie underground and Music CIty’s corporate offices. He is a musical polymath that has written and produced music, his own and for others, making his way in a musical landscape that is always moving, constantly reshaping.

“I decided that as a very eclectic writer, music fan and artist, I needed to promote a few different things that I do,” says Mcanulty. “Over the years I've been a commercial staff writer for jingles. I've done voiceover work, I've produced other artists, I've mixed other artists, I've written for other artists, made beats that rappers have used and co-write with other artists.” Mcanulty’s work has accompanied global-scale brands like Chevy, Subaru and Nintendo, while his brands De Novo Dahl, By Lightning and Chill Witch have been critical darling and audience favorites. Mcanulty’s vision of pop is a big tent, with room for a lots of sounds and lots of people, lots of hooks and lots of ideas. To Mcanulty, the boundaries between genres, the boundaries between art and commerce, the boundaries between people, are fluid and flowing, the best qualities bubbling to the top as streams unite to create the rivers of sound he likes to swim in. “When I first started trying to succeed in music, I turned down a scholarship to college and I put a ton of pressure on myself to prove to my parents that it wasn't a bad decision,” says Mcanulty.

“I think the greatest thing I could have ever done for myself as an artist, was to take that pressure off.” The result of letting that pressure go, of removing that creative dam, has been a flood of joyful music and ideas from one of the Music City music community’s most productive members. Mcanulty’s brain is a torrent of tunes, an outpouring of new material has been a long time coming. Shaped by a lifetime of following songs where they need to go, Mcanulty’s newest material is more confident, more visionary and more inviting than ever before. “[I am] constantly juggling, working full time and trying to be an artist, but I'm enjoying that process,” says Mcanulty. “It's really stretched me and I think it's helped me become a better person than I would've been otherwise.”

written by Sean L Maloney - music critic, arts journalist & author of 33 1/3: The Modern Lovers