Grizfolk

The Grizfolk of today is a different animal from the band that dropped Waking Up the Giants, their debut album, more than a decade ago. Life has been lived, players have come and gone, and locations have changed. But the group, led by vocalist-guitarist Adam Roth and drummer Bill Delia, along with bassist Ryan Williams, have never been more confident of their future.

After forming in Los Angeles in 2012, Grizfolk now consider Nashville home base. And the sound they’ve crafted over the years — a robust blend of folk and electronic elements they’ve dubbed “Neon Americana” — is made for this moment.

“I feel like we've really figured it out,” Roth says. “We’ve been through all the things we needed to go through to get to the point where it all made sense. We’re writing the music that we need to write, saying what we need to say, and making it sound the way we want it to. We couldn’t have done that without time and experience.”

“This band’s best stuff is yet to come,” adds Delia. “Even though we've been doing this for more than 13 years, our new songs show the arc of both our music and our story. The new batch of music is Grizfolk coming into full focus.”

But to sharpen that focus, the group had to go through the wringer. In 2018, Roth’s father took ill and the Florida native moved from California to Nashville to be closer to him. Then, like nearly all live bands, Grizfolk were derailed by the pandemic and struggled to keep momentum. Once they found their footing, they suffered the immeasurable loss of their friend and collaborator, Allen Blickle, to cancer in 2025. As the co-producer of Grizfolk’s 2019 LP Rarest of Birds, Blickle worked with the band on some of their best-known songs, including “Shakey in the Knees” and “Spoonful.”

All of that, along with Roth’s now eight years of sobriety, informs the band’s new music. Songs like “Lie to Me,” “Be Someone,” and “Time Being” reflect a group at the peak of their songwriting, producing, and performing powers.

“For a long time, we traversed multiple genres, but we’ve always had a foundation in Americana folk and electronic music,” Roth says. “Over the last couple years, after just writing and writing and writing, we landed on these songs that define the ‘Neon Americana’ sound. It’s a more mature version of what we started out doing.”

“Lie to Me,” written with Americana hero Anderson East, introduced Grizfolk to Nashville’s rich history of co-writing. A sultry, brooding song, it’s a love story that is both intimate yet universal: “Anybody that’s been through a hard time with someone but still loves the hell out of them can relate to it,” Roth says.

“Be Someone,” meanwhile, is a propulsive jam written during an equally fast-paced session with Timothy Deaux (Kings of Leon, the Whigs). Built around a drum machine beat, the song finds Roth singing, “Let me live/I wanna be someone,” and was fleshed out in just 20 minutes. It’s one of a few anthemic songs that Grizfolk have been experimenting with in the studio.

Chief among them, however, is “Time Being,” co-written with East and Trent Dabbs. “That was really the first moment where we landed on the ‘Neon Americana’ sound,” Roth says. “It’s got that anthemic, Americana feeling with a big, sing-along chorus. I just can’t wait for fans to hear it. It’s such a simple message about coming back to the presence of living in the moment, which is integral to my sobriety, the idea of one day at a time.”

“Time Being” also lands in that Grizfolk sweet spot between the loping melodies of the Traveling Wilburys and the atmospheric production of the War on Drugs. Not surprisingly, Grizfolk cite both artists as guiding lights, along with Tom Petty, the National, and the more Americana-leaning work of the Killers.

With an album nearly finished, Grizfolk are looking forward to taking the new chapter to fans who followed the band since Waking Up the Giants and Rarest of Birds, and those who may have discovered them when they toured with Bastille and Haim, or by hearing their songs in TV and movies. (Tracks like “Put Your Hands on Me” and “Way Back When” have been featured on Netflix and in feature films.)

“We’re very much a live band,” Delia says. “I'm excited to hear these new songs and their more intricate parts through bigger speakers and P.A.s and watch how audiences react. It’s going to be really fun to see how our fans have evolved just like we have.”

According to Roth, the Grizfolk message can be told through persistence.

“Over the last five or six years, it's been very hard,” Roth says, “but we've never given up. I think there is something about continuing to push on that you can hear in our music, especially in these new songs. It’s about finding the courage to move forward, despite all sorts of challenges. That’s what Grizfolk have come to represent, both for me, Bill, and Ryan, and for our fans.”