Press Release - “Feature 45: Joel Forlines”

Mutual Groove is a rock-fueled alt-funk machine that jiggles your speakers from Nashville, TN. With songs that are armed with grooves so saucy it's like Grandma's homemade soup for your ears, they make stationary listening impossible. Turn them up loud, and you may bob your head off your neck, or tap your toes through your shoes. Whether you prefer singing along or riding the energy of pure grooves, Mutual Groove is something for everybody.


What are the band's main influences?

Sly & The Family Stone, Parliament, Kool & The Gang, Vulfpeck, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ripe, Moon Taxi, James Brown, Earth, Wind & Fire, John Mayer, Khruangbin, Average White Band, Tower of Power, The Meters, Pigeons Playing Ping Pong, Bill Withers, Cory Wong, Mayer Hawthorne, The Gap Band, Bruce Springsteen, PREP, Silk Sonic, Herbie Hancock, Funkadelic, Steely Dan, Allen Stone, Mutemath, Lake Street Dive, The Motet


Can you briefly describe what each song is about? 

Ever wake up some days feeling like "the dream" isn't riding out the way you imagined? No matter how much you try, you still can't gas up on your goals? The bank account is like a leaky oil filter. Grinding the gears at your job, but still can’t seem to reach the destination, ready to just call it? Yeah, us too... Life can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. There’s a lot of the same feelings & stories road warriors have from steering around an oven on wheels state to state. So naturally, we paralleled the different points of views. Years have flown by in the left lane and you’re still taking votes on fixing the trailer tire axles that are gonna snap before getting back home or burning the cash on a broken AC. The latter more tempting with it being 105 degrees, humid as hell and there’s 6 dudes drenched in sweat with shoes & shirts off. The moldy sunflower seeds in the back row have formed their own militia and are taking up forces with last week's Taco Bell nobody wants to claim. Then the trailer spins out of control when you least expect it. Trapped in the middle of an Arkansas summer didn't offer much hope for a speedy rental after business hours. Ten tow calls later, no responses. Just trying to chase down the next gig before doors open. All of it for some chump change of a check and a couple cocktails. But when you get back home from it all, you're oddly ready for another round. Maybe it’s called passion. Or maybe it’s just straight up stupidity. Regardless if you love it, you’ll want to keep driving through the night. Don’t give up on finding the journey that puts you on the right path. But back to the music, this one gets down for sure. It releases March 3rd. Happy Employee Appreciation Day!

With a similar message, we wrote Started Livin’ first after talking about Joel’s struggle to get back on his feet after incarceration. One of the nicest & most loving guys we know. Wrong place, wrong time, but getting out as a full-time musician on the brink of a global quarantine wasn’t the easiest climb. Roadblocks were plentiful and it seemed like all he could do was be grateful for what he had in the moment. Finally coming out of the rut, he shouts for joy as things start to look up. We want to shout with him and hope that everyone else can join us. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel.


Is there a particular ethos behind the 45 or any particular music styles that inspired it?

We all love a lot of old-school funk and just thought Joel's voice really meshed with the songs well, like a melty cheddar folding into a steamy cauldron of macaroni. Joel’s energy and passion for music captured us over the years and we felt it was time to collaborate.


Were there any notable or amusing happenings surrounding the recording/production of the 45?

Oh always with us. The background noises at the end of Started Livin' were left in while we were warming up to do gang vocals. We’re a notoriously goofy bunch and felt it fit the energy to keep them in. I also like to layer in some of the demo vocals where the initial idea sparked. You’ll hear those blended into each track.

In Tough Gets Goin', everybody we showed the demo to thought we were saying "When the tough gets goin, and your meat is overloaded" instead of "your meter's overloaded". We tried to emphasize it a little more clearly when we went to record the final gangs, but it still sounds like it a bit. I'm sure that'll come back to haunt us. Oh well! Kind of keeps the story alive.


Who are the band members and what do they play? 

David Martin - Drums, Pat Graves - Bass, Ryan Swinehart - Sax, Sam Woods - Guitar, All - Gang Vocals, Joel Forlines - Featured Vocalist


How and where did you get together? 

David & Pat met in the DC area in high school, teamed up as a dynamic duo and then moved to Nashville, TN. We all had our fair share of playing in different bands and backing multiple artists in town, but couldn’t quite find the project that made us LOVE what we were doing. In 2017, we all four came together and started touring in a high energy hip hop project for a few years. Although Mutual Groove was already in existence with just Pat & David at the helm, we found through the years of being on the road together that we finally found our brotherhood. In 2019, we decided to break off and the 4 of us started to carve our own creative path. We wanted to make Mutual Groove an equal environment & ego-free. The goal was to have our own material with just the core 4, but after living in Nashville for over a decade, we realized that there is so much talent among our friend groups and other artists that we know. Some of them just don’t have a budget or a means to produce, engineer & market their own material. Luckily, the four of us had different strengths to create what some have referred to us as a “well-oiled production machine”. We want to create music and grow with each other to help build a better community that musicians & artists can thrive in. This is the “Mutual” part of MG and hence came our Feature 45s.


Have you played any notable gigs, festivals or other events? Likewise radio or TV appearances? 

Kaboo Fest (Cayman Islands), Kaboo Fest (Del Mar), Kaboo Fest (Dallas), American Authors, 3OH!3, Dogwood Arts Fest, Cha Wa, Waka Flocka, Alana Royale, Roots of a Rebellion, Elite 8 in Lightning 100’s Music City Mayhem last year.


Are there any other interesting or amusing happenings – no matter how small – that the band have been involved with that would be of interest to those who like your music? 

We had a squatter in our Airbnb in Pittsburgh after a show one time. Our host came by the next morning to investigate and thought our guitar player, Sam, was the squatter…

We’ve got loads of tour stories, just ask Sam. He has an elephant’s memory. We love the life-inspection from him: “It’s not about the age of the car, it’s about how many miles you put on it”. So true and I think that also shines through in Tough Gets Goin’.