Buy our CD-Rs from Self-Satisfied.
Groute Gate Gender formed in 1997 in Coldwater, Michigan, when Brandon Labelle (guitar, turntables), Greig Bloom (bass, keyboard), and Levi Bailey (drums) decided that they had outgrown the band they were currently involved with, Pinion. Pinion was basically a bad cover band with an occasional bad original song. One night, Brandon and Levi just started making music up, realized how fun it was, and decided to start a new band, including bassist Greig Bloom, also formerly of Pinion.

Marcia Roberts, Levi's mom, eventually thought of the name "Groute Gate Gender". She could never explain how she thought of the strange moniker. The boys in the band took it as a sign from God, and things really got rolling...

They knew that improvisation was nothing new, and were heavily influenced by groups such as Tortoise, Nels Cline Trio, and Mr. Bungle. They played a few shows, usually to unintersted crowds that would compare them to Pink Floyd and say things like "Man, if you guys got a singer, you'd be sweet!" It seemed that no one around them understood what Groute Gate Gender was trying to do. One of their best shows ever was at the Bronson Theater in Bronson, MI with The Somber Worth (which featured members of Uncarved Block). Marc Palm (guitar, electronics) later completed their line-up, and they played a few great shows together, including a show in Kalamazoo in 2000 where they used a script they'd written composed of musical/emotional instructions (slow, fast, loud, soft, happy, sad, etc.), and another in Marshall where they simply set up 4 TV/VCR combos, one for each band member, playing videotapes of each member's pre-recorded, isolated performance, with each member completely unaware of what the other was playing. The concept turned out better than the band anticipated, and actually impressed some of the mostly young/punk audience members.

Groute Gate Gender will still play the occasional show here and there, but geographical situations have made it quite a challenge. They haven't "broken up". There are several tapes of improvisations, including one with Tracy Northern of Oli Gunglivash, which happens to be available at the Groute Gate Gender Purevolume profile, and on the self-titled CD-R available through Self-Satisfied (and with the wealth of unreleased material sitting around, you can expect many more Groute Gate Gender releases from this label in the future)..