Eldridge Gravy & the Court Supreme - Band Bio and Mythology

ELDRIDGE GRAVY & THE COURT SUPREME is a funk juggernaut. Backed by the hot, gritty orchestration of the 10-person Court Supreme, frontman Eldridge Gravy easily works dancefloors to a fever pitch with his full-bore performance and smooth rapport with the audience.

The band, like so many of its members, is the product of a wonderful accident. Early in 2006, in what was supposed to be a one-off event, an instrumental band teamed up with a guest singer to learn some James Brown and Parliament covers for a moving-out party. The next morning, the house was torn up, shattered glass everywhere, tables broken, and the landlord was on his way for the final walk-through. In the wake of this carnage, ELDRIDGE GRAVY & THE COURT SUPREME was born.

The group quickly picked up horns, keys, backup singers, and were soon 11 men and women strong. Originals soon replaced covers, sounding like a viscous blend of the songs they cut their teeth on -- Sly and The Family Stone, Funkadelic, and James Brown are touchstones for their sound, but Eldridge Gravy has a distinct sound and persona that's unmistakably their own. While Eldridge Gravy fit in with the recent soul revival heralded by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, they have also played alongside hip hop crews, balkan brass groups, and scuzzy bar rock bands. Their high energy, tight arrangements, and massive stage presence have the power to convince any crowd that funk ain't dead.

In May of 2009 the group released their first CD "US IS WHAT TIME IT IS" to a sold out Tractor Tavern. Recorded at AVAST Studios and mastered by Mell Dettmer, the album is a taut collection of hook-filled psychedelic soul and funk that calls to mind Sly's "Stand!" and The Temptations circa 1969.

THE BAND:

Eldridge Gravy- vocals

Lady Gravy- vocals

Ms. Bean- vocals

Donnie Dollerstack- vocals

Yeager- tenor saxophone

The Colonel- baritone saxophone

G.I.T- trombone

Daddy Diddio- keys

The Crime- guitar

Wilson Mason- bass

Ol' Pollina- drums

MYTHOLOGY

Eldridge Gravy, like many beings, was a child of circumstance. Born of
earthly and divine (some might even say bizarre) heritage, he was the
product of a rogue muse seduced by the sea. This muse bore the
earthly name of Roger Nelson. He was to one day become a man of great
musical and social importance but, for now, he is simply a young man
fleeing the Midwest in search of something more. Nelson hopped trains
and hitched rides south into the musical heartland of this great
nation of America. He wasn't quite sure what he'd find but possessed a
great conviction that what he sought was guiding him toward his
destination. A siren-song sung by a deep and eerie voice bore him
aloft on the breeze of potential.

He would soon find himself in New Orleans busking for his meals on the
streets, using his gift of song to readily fill his raspberry beret
with coin. Now, you might ask why a muse of ancient Greek fame may
find itself embodied in a young man in America, to which I would
naturally reply: “Mind you own damn bees-wax!" But for the sake of
story, I will oblige you this once.

When a muse finds himself fallen from grace, or simply grows bored
with amusing lowly humans with his gift from on-high, he shall be
stripped of all but talent and anchored here on earth in such a
vagabond form. With no memory of his divine past, Roger has only the
deep resonating song of his intuition to guide him along his path.

Though he cannot see the light within when he looks into a mirror,
this does not keep those who are sensitive to such things from taking
notice. It was the aged eyes of a well-known practitioner of the
local hoodoo arts who peered within our young protagonist, this grubby
street urchin, and bade him "Come" with an offer of wine and food.
Roger heard again the voice of destiny calling him, pulling at him
like a magnet. The old women led him to the wharfs of the great City.
She inhabited a small sailboat so long ensconced within the dock that
it may well have grown there. Inside, the old gris-gris women uncorked
an unmarked bottle and poured our protagonist a cupful in a banged-up
and dusty chalice. In the dim of the candlelight, Roger was certain
he noticed a greenish tint to the drink. Over a small, round,
ancient-looking table the decrepit old woman spread a shimmering
cloth, intoning in a low voice words in a language that even a learned
linguist couldn't have unraveled.

As Roger drank and took of the crusty bread she offered, the old
mystic produced a pot filled with runes. She closed her eyes still
muttering something sounding very much like "Yog-Sothoth" and drew 7
runes from the pot. Now, your usual Gaelic symbols may seem strange
and somewhat foreign to the untrained eye, but the mystical alphabet
on these runes - indeed the very stone from which they were fashioned
- would seem unearthly even to the great Merlin.

Roger was beginning to feel a bit woozy from the wine he’d imbibed.
He was repeatedly mesmerized by his reflection in the cup's curved
eye. Managing to break his gaze with effort, he looked up to find his
host transformed: gone was the crooked and bent form. In it’s place,
a column-like erection. Her eyes were ablaze with the same sickly hue
as he had espied within his goblet. The young muse, our Roger, now
understood his drink to be drugged, because even the hobo moonshine
he’d shared with his fellow train-hoppers had never had such effect,
and never with such haste.

To his ears, the witch’s chant rang, "YOG-SOTHOTH", but from her lips
to his mind came another voice, or rather a blending of voices human
and other, murmuring in a cadence which sounded backwards. “He who
shall awake, Keeper of the Old Ones, Ruler of R’yleh, has chosen you
as his Prince, bearer of his brood.” Roger’s head was spinning and
the fumes of the incense filled him with nausea. Looking up out of
the porthole, Roger understood that the rocking in his head was
matched by the rocking on the boat, for they were indeed on the open
water now. As the old sea-witch continued to intone “YOG-SOTHOTH”
with growing intensity, Roger tried to gather his senses. He wanted
to yell, to ask the heavens “What is going on here!?!”, but alas, he
could not control his own faculties. Tears welled up in the eye of
our hero, torn from him by the exertion of so much energy to no avail.
Roger felt the merciless and searing pain in his throat from the
unborn scream.

At the close of this eternity, mere seconds to you or I, Roger passed out.

When Roger awoke, it was to a warm shaft of light penetrating the
darkness of his eyelids. “Oh,” thought he, “it was just a fevered
nightmare brought on by too much bath-tub gin. Here are the sun’s
warm rays waking me through the holes in my worn tarpaulin tent.” As
he probed around in the pitch black, feeling for the old familiar
flap, a creeping wonder came over Roger that made him deeply aroused
and also hesitant.... how close and fetid the tent felt this morning!
and how damp! “The joys of a drifter”, he consoled himself, “asleep in
the rain”. Still, his stomach churned like the sea and his loins
filled with blood as he pushed, trying to free his head from the
ruck-sack. Struggling to get his arm and shoulder through, a horrible
and thrilling understanding began to creep over Roger. The cause of
his dis-ease was becoming rapidly obvious: his “pup-tent” was anything
but…

Roger found his body cocooned in some material, slick and rubbery,
bringing to mind the texture of an octopus’s mantle. As his eyes
adjusted to the light, a bewildered Nelson began to take in his
surroun'dngs. He lay prone on a giant stone slab rectangular in
shape, an alter. All around, posted at 7 points, torches stood.
Burning and smelling of animal fat, they dripped a quickly congealing
pulp onto the wooden planks of the floor. A rhythmic chanting, not
unlike that of the witch, reverberated through Roger's head: sounds
from many mouths unseen. The floor itself rocked in time with the
bizarre cadence and as he lost his night-blindness Roger realized he
was on a sort of make-shift barge. On three sides of the barge were
schooners of varying size and states of decay. The flotilla were
lashed to old dock planks jutting up haphazardly out of the black
water below.

Strangely giddy and excited Nelson wondered "Where am I?" A low
rumble built, the chanting voices grew louder... and suddenly CRACK!
A bolt of lightning rent the midnight clouds, revealing the shape of a
strange island. Indeed, the boats huddled in the calmer bay of this
terrible island like pigs suckling at the teat of a great and eldritch
sow. CRACK! Again and again lightning struck, mocking nature by
touching the same point repeatedly. Littered across the deserted and
desolate face of the island there seemed to be ruins of a strange
sort. They were neither the buildings nor the ancient temples that
one might recognize and accept, even in such surroundings. Instead,
he beheld bizarre oblongs that were at once somehow symmetrical and
yet betrayed an underlying disjointedness, an unnatural asymmetry.
The greatest of these was central to the mass of unearthly land and it
was this that seemed to draw the lightning to it like a rod in water.
Light from the torches and the fantastic, charged atmospheric display
revealed to Roger his captors. A mish-mash, a hodge-podge, a motley
crew they were! From every permutation of race and gender, with
bulbous and dis-proportionately large genitals exposed in leering
display, some defying coherent description of any kind, all chanting
“YOG-SOTHOTH" in a cadence so eerily in unison that it should have set
Roger’s hair on end. Instead, a demented laughter crescendo ed
through his brain.

The ancient sea-crone came close to his face and Roger would have
cried out, but he felt his face twist into a snarling smirk instead.
It was almost as if his subconscious knew something he had yet to
learn and was displaying it without his consent. Now the witch had
our hero by his curly, dark locks and her fiery emerald gaze was
burning into him as she led the chant: "YOG-SOTHOTH, YOG-SOTHOTH".

Barely noticing the searing pain in his scalp, Roger’s eyes welled
with new tears as his body shuddered uncontrollably in an ecstasy he
had never before known. Just as the mightiest of bolts struck the
steeple of that ungodly shape (a temple?) he let out a resounding
"Awhoo-ah!"

Even as the yelp escaped his lips, it seemed to ascend the temple like
the purple-tinged static on a Jacob’s ladder. The chanting of the
multitudes didn't cease so much as grow into one long, drawn-out
drone. It seemed even the dark sea itself stopped churning, and the
barge stilled as if frozen in time. From the dark clouds above began
to spill a purple rain.
The witch, still clutching a tuft of his shining black curls, was the
only one who seemed unaffected; she was chanting something new now,
something Roger realized had been pounding deep within his brain,
beneath his consciousness, for his entire journey. This, THIS, was
the intangible force that had driven him so far. The hag's sea-salt
crusted, cracking lips droned on, a name forming. "CTHULU, CTHULU,
CTHU-LUUUUUU!" She reached a gnarled claw to Roger's left cheek and
touched a spot on his jaw-line that immediately began to throb with a
sickeningly sweet pain. From beneath her robes and chords, she
produced a small sack, grease-lined, dripping, and smelling of fish
heads and brine.

The ground began to rumble as this mad priestess pulled from the bag a
single, squirming cephalopod appendage. She brought this to the
searing spot on Nelsons cheek and, as a parasite instinctively seeks
out the vulnerability of its host, the tentacle bore its way into our
hero's cheek and along his jaw-bone, becoming one with his head. With
the ocean’s floor itself reverberating his name, CTHULU was unleashed!
Roger’s twisted mind understood now, this, the sea-hag’s unspeakable
prophecy, had come at last. The Great Old One had caused the lands to
shift so that he might unleash his eldritch progeny upon man. And he,
Roger Nelson, would be his Prince! A joy and pride he'd never before
known overtook the Prince.

The rumbling began to throb and accelerate as throngs of followers
seemed to wake from their stupor. Bodies twisted wildly in unnatural
poses as they began orgiastically tearing at each others’ clothes.
The mighty Zeus-bolt that had been dangling like a thread above the
accursed tower burst in an aurora across the evil land. The temple
itself cracked in two as if, somehow, it had been waiting since years
immemorial for this moment to at last expire and become dust. From
the fissure that once was a temple, a sickish green haze crept aloft,
crawling onto the sea winds and riding them to a gale force. One
would suppose our stolid protagonist to be blanched with terror, but
Roger, steadfastly submitting to his fate, was no such case. From the
moment the evil Cthuloid appendage bonded with his skull, a barely
abated and rabid desire was unleashed within the Prince. He was
enthralled by his ecstasy for his Lord and Master, CTHULU.

The spot on his cheek grew dark and hard. It shone with a
phosphorescent glow as Nelson swooned orgasmically. The sounds
escaping, unbidden, from his dark lips echoed across the expanse, too
far from land for souls to hear, but not for them to feel. The Cult of
CTHULU surrounding our Prince gyrated and pulsed to his ecclesiastic
yelps and shrieks of delight. Moving in time with the rumbling funk
of the earth’s tectonic thumps, all now turned to the south where the
tabernacle of R'yleah once stood. From the void came slithering
tentacles, trembling and snaking; it seemed there were thousands
moving toward the altar-barge and the eldritch dance party taking
place there.

Soon, the bulbous and gelatinous stump of the evil octopus roots came
into view. A thousand-tentacled head with as many green glowing eyes
was revealed, and soon the elephantine bulwark of a torso with its
great mass of arms revealed themselves connected to a monster almost
unspeakable... almost, but... well, one should not in any case wish to
plague the reader’s nights with terrors. The vast, wretched
silhouette of the monster-god was framed by the insane bacchanalian
orgy of his throng and lit by the sky's electricity, resembling a
torrid mirror-ball in some purgatory of a disco-plex. With
frightening speed CTHULU proceeded to the sacrificial altar. Waves of
followers parted before him, as did the waves around his bulk. The
Prince was now convulsed, eyes rolling back in bliss as his face
throbbed and pulsed with that same glowing green. The many tentacles
of CTHULU encircled Prince Roger’s slight form, cradling him in a
display of tenderness unimaginable in this living abomination, unknown
in all his eons of existence. Looking into his many eyes and finding
a vast dark void behind them, Roger went rigid. Fear and ecstasy
co-mingled within him until they were indistinguishable. His body was
raised up to the stars as the terrible tentacles of CTHULU found all
manner of purchase in the Prince's earthly form and made it divine.
They copulated together again and again, creating the seed of
anti-immaculation. The Prince's cries of ecstasy made the howling
cult below rabid in response. As their bodies throbbed in unison to
this eldritch funk, the moment of climax ripped from them what was
left of their very souls!

Bodies dropping left and right, maddened spirts escaping towards the
light, the Prince let out a final "Ahwoo-AH!" and the departing souls
were caught in the space between Roger and CTHULU. Wretched pagan
spirits spiraled in a vortex of space and time, joining their meager
sum together with the apocalyptic power of this, their God, and the
prima materia of the Prince. Coalescing like celestial bodies in a
super-nova, reverberating with the sacrificial cry of the demi-god
Prince, one soul was created of the many:
Eldridge Gravy.

The scene below was of desolation and carnage like the remnants of a
demonic frat-party. Bodies were strewn about the barge, floating,
soon to bloat and become human chum in the black waters. The Terrible
God was nowhere to be seen. The Hag stood solitary over the body of
Nelson and a wailing babe, stark white in the moonlight. A baby with
tentacles atop his head and a Prince, nearly dead. The only sound was
the frighteningly tremendous cry of the unholy infant, Medusa-like
tentacles trembling in time atop his head with his infant uvula.

The Priestess wasted no time in scooping up the child, spawned of
demon and muse, in one arm and hoisting the still breathing body of
Roger over her other shoulder. This was one strong sea-bitch! Onto a
wasted boat she stepped, and, by some enchantment of the elements,
made haste, watching as the fleet of ships and indeed the whole island
were swept down and down forever into a violent whirlpool. As they
sped away giant tentacles shot from the water and swallowed up the
unholy mess with a wave, as if to say goodbye. From the depths, a
deafening roar sounded in tune with the freak-child’s cries.

Before returning to that great old city - the soul of America as it
were - the old witch docked and weathered the ensuing hurricanes in a
convent in the isles of Barbados, where the secret sisters of her
accursed coven were told to keep the babe until he came of age and
learned of his TRUE heritage. She left her prophecy encoded in the
language of The Old Ones for the eldritch boy who would become an
Eldridge man.

Prince Roger Nelson was taken back to New Orleans where, blessed with
selective amnesia through the witch’s Dark Arts, he began a path to
great stardom and fame - the subject of a whole other mythology. He
can never erase the abhorrent mark the Cthuloid tentacle left on his
left cheek though, and if ever you see his likeness, this much is
evident.

You might wonder, dear reader, how I came to know this story, and I
will tell you: I came to inherit it in bits and pieces, through
strange paths and dreams, all beginning with an old piece of
parchment, a legend, a prophecy.

I know it by right, for I am Eldridge Gravy.