Song of the Day 8/21: Grace Vonderkuhn, “Rock and Roll Gary”

Guest post by Nathan Arizona

Newark’s Grace Vonderkuhn rips headlong through her garage/psych/power-punk songs, but her burgeoning career hit a speed bump during the Covid shutdown. Her band, a trio known just as Grace Vonderkuhn, earned good reviews for its its debut album in 2018 and turned heads on the national club tour that followed. One critic named the band one of the top 10 to play at the prestigious South by Southwest music festival in Austin.

Grace Vonderkuhn was about to put the finishing touches on its follow-up album and hit the road again when covid hit. Grace (real name Grace Koon) spent a lot of time watching “Golden Girls’ reruns while waiting for release of that second album and a national tour in support of it. The new album, “Pleasure Pain,” finally came out Aug. 13, recorded in Philadelphia for a Virginia label. It should put her career right back on track.

The band has already resumed touring, starting close to home with outdoor concerts at Arden’s Shady Grove and the Jackson Inn in Wilmington with a club gig early next month in Philadelphia, where she built a following after success on the Delaware circuit. The group features Dave McGrory on drums and Brian Bartling on bass. Grace handles guitar, sometimes gearing down for ballads with a touch of dream pop. She cites the Pixies, the Breeders, the Pretenders and T-Rex as influences.

This is a tune from the new album.

The band’s best known song is probably “Worry,” from the first album, “Reveries.” I once saw a grainy early video of her charging through the song in what seemed to be a back yard filled with neighbors. It was rough but amazing. I can’t find that one, but here she performs it for the online performance platform Audiotree.