working on new music to be released in 2022!

What started out as just a bunch of musicians to back me up on my solo albums morphed into a full fledged BAND

in the beginning, I used to go under the name “greg gilroy & the critically ashamed band” when I would perform live gigs.

the thought process of this was that the releases, the songs and the recording of the albums were always 100% on my own and put out under my own name, but when playing live I wanted to get together a revolving cast of characters who could play the music with me on stage, but also have almost their own identity and not be just me.

at first, like I said it was a revolving cast of different musicians and I was ok with that. ever since I started playing live supporting my first album HEAL in 2015, I had multiple guitar players, drummers, bass players come in and out of the band pretty frequently. at one point we were as little as a trio and at one point, as large as six members.

Some had other projects that they had more of an input/passion in that they wanted to pursue (which I was always 100% supportive of), some had commitment issues and some to be honest, came down to egos and clashing ideas/personalities. it got to be frustrating, but I understood. It’s not easy sometimes to just play something that is given to them and not have any creative input in the process. IT was always “album is out, plat the songs the way they are intended to”

But by the time my third record “Glamour & Filth” was released in Sept 2018 and the live album that was recorded at the release party the next year that we put out called “All the Clams…LIVE!” by that time I had a really solid group of players that all got along super well, sounded amazing and the band as a whole really started to gel. Most of the songs when we played live honestly were different than the albums because they put their own stank on it and 9X out of 10 it was better than the recording!

on this album cycle in 2019 we started playing some better quality, higher profile places like The Chance, The Loft, Toad’s Place and the response by the crowds was great! The only problem was when you gave the club the name of the band? It was confusing for some reason. If it was just “Greg Gilroy” they didn’t understand and throw on “And The Critically Ashamed Band” after? Too wordy and still more confusion.

So going into the end of the year, I literally since being a sober person now for almost 2 years I had more new songs…almost 20+ ideas for a new record!

It was after some discussion with the band members that for the next release, we should record and release as just THE CRITICALLY ASHAMED. It would be a full fledged band where everyone can write parts, contribute ideas, sing parts and feed off each other just like we do when we play live. Their “own stank” would be recorded and we would release essentially our FIRST self titled album.

They took the songs off the demos I recorded they wanted, we recorded at both Gary and Shawn’s home studios and completed @ 11 songs for our debut self titled record in the Winter of 2019-2020

Then by March 2020? COVID

We did release the album in May 2020 to some positive response, but the fact that we couldn’t play live to support it was really a bummer. the momentum we built over the last year or two? Finished…

But that doesn’t mean the end…only the beginning. we hope to reconvene in the studio after the holidays to start working on new music and we hope to see you all on stage soon!

Much Love,

G2