With a Charlotte native at the helm, Nashville’s Grumpy band embraces its inner geek  

Charlotte native Mason Schmitt feels like she’s been working on her band Grumpy’s debut album since she was in her teens sharing her original songs at Evening Muse’s weekly open mic nights.

It’s not that the songs on “Loser” date back that far. While songwriting came easily, she struggled to find her writing voice.

It was only after she let go of the idea of being a serious artist that the album came together. Schmitt wrote her first song for an audition for a school play because she couldn’t find a song she wanted to sing. “My parents were like, ‘you wrote that?’ “

With her parents’ encouragement, she started sharing her original songs with her guitar teacher, John Tosco.

“He really amped me up and encouraged me. We’d get so excited about dreaming and planning, talking about the music business and being a songwriter and performer and who I should meet next, that most of our time was not spent on learning guitar,” she says. “It was just something fun to do and then in my adult life it’s been cathartic too.”

Yet it wasn’t until she graduated from Nashville’s Belmont University that her style really came into focus.

“A year before I started writing the songs that became this album, I’d almost given up on music,” she says while visiting her parent’s Myers Park home last week.

“I was attempting to write an album for 10 years. I was just like, ‘This isn’t it. This isn’t it.’ Music was painful and stressful for a long time. I thought I had to write something palatable and relatable and the songs were coming out crappy.”

Once she dismissed the notion of being a tortured artist, the songs came quickly.

“Once I was finally writing for me, it ended up being the best stuff I’d ever written. I couldn’t write these goofy songs until I took the pressure off. I didn’t think people would care about fun songs, which is funny because I care about fun songs,” she says. “Grumpy to me is me finally figuring out how to make music fun.”

With jangly guitars and winking lyrics, Schmitt recalls ‘90s alt-rock artists like Juliana Hatfield or contemporaries like Julie Jacklin, yet her vocals stir up references to ‘70s AM pop and the Joni Mitchell and Neil Young records she was raised on.

Upbeat songs like “You Don’t Like Dogs” and “Davy Jones” tread in quirky territory, but there’s also a lot of bittersweet heart on songs like “Jeepers Creepers” and the title track – a self-deprecating sort of tongue-in-cheek love letter to her fiancé/Grumpy drummer, Austin Arnold.

“The Grumpy image is this goofy, niceness. When I’m on stage that’s how I’m talking between songs and that’s how I am in real life. Songwriting is where I’m looking at myself really hard, my challenges and my flaws,” she says. “People come up to me all the time and say, ‘You’re not grumpy.’ Austin gets it. He knows. So that song is about him loving me and knowing completely who I am.”

Once she embraced her “goofier” side through mostly biographical songs, Grumpy really started to form.

“It matches my personality. It’s easy for me to create this band and brand because it’s honestly who I am,” says Schmitt, who often dresses like a grownup Punky Brewster on stage.

She may have been shooting for palatable and relatable songs before, but her frankness helps draw in listeners. One of her rules is making herself share the uncomfortable details.

“If I catch myself saying, ‘I can’t say that in a song, I have to say it.’ I have to say things that are embarrassing to admit. Later those end up being the compelling parts of the songs – the truthful moments,” she says. “My friends joke that I don’t have any secrets.”