Amazing Grace: Hipster Songstress from Walnut Creek Making it Big in Indie Rock Scene

Strange but true.  Grace Cooper, guitar player, singer and songwriter for the beloved indie rock band The Sandwitches, was born and raised here in Walnut Creek.  

The Sandwitches, a San Francisco-based all girl trio regularly perform at popular hipster clubs such as Café du Nord, the Rickshaw Stop, the Hemlock, Hotel Utah and Bottom of the Hill.  

When on tour, they perform in nightspots in urban centers from Portland to Brooklyn. Their show for last spring's Noise Pop Festival sold out. And their debut album How to Make Ambient Sadcake on Turn Up Records launched early this summer to rave reviews from far flung sources such as London's LastFM which affectionately called them "Our favorite twisted old-timey garage trio."

Another music critic enthused, "These are fab haunting tunes wrapped in tender weird pop."  

Yet aside from a brief star turn in Bancroft Elementary's fifth grade production of "The Nutcracker," the co-creator of those aforementioned fab haunting tunes was not a grade school diva or even a high school pop tart in her Walnut Creek youth.  

"I loved singing when I was a little girl but in private. I only began teaching myself how to play musical instruments about three years ago," Grace, now 25, explains. 

But musical notes run through her genes. Her father Ken Cooper is a professional musician who supported the family playing both independently and in many local bands.  

Grace says her father never pushed her or her two siblings towards music but was pleased to share his know-how when she started writing and recording her own tunes. Grace has several albums she recorded solo.

Shy by nature and not self-promoting, Grace was just quietly creating her own music. Then her experience working at Rasputin Music while she attended Diablo Valley College helped her score a job at Amoeba Music on Haight Street.  

The Haight Street Amoeba is a well-known musical mecca in the Bay Area and most of the staff and many customers are in the music business.  An Amoeba colleague introduced her to Heidi Alexander, who also wrote songs, played guitar and sang.  They added drummer Roxie Bodeur and The Sandwitches were born.

Grace still marvels how the Sandwitches came to be. "It was never my idea to be in a band. I was actually kind of skeptical about being able to work with anyone else and be creative. But Heidi had heard my songs and she convinced me to give it a try."

Three years later and the Sandwitches are still going strong. They are planning their next tour and looking forward to revisiting some of their favorite venues across the U.S. 

Grace commented, "We want to go to Portland and play at the Dancing Bear again because it has a great sign of a bear in a bikini dancing. We'd also like to go back to Detroit. We played at a bowling alley there and we had fun. We also want to play at a bar in Solano that is supposed to be the oldest bar in California and has a stuffed dog on the bar. We like quirky places."

In the quirky vein, The Sandwitches also are going vinyl with a four song one-sided 12-inch record and two 7-inch two sided records coming out on various indie labels. But you may not see any of these or any other merchandise for sale at a table when the Sandwitches perform.  

"We're incredibly bad about that," Grace admits with a laugh.   The Walnut Creek native is busy. In addition to playing shows, writing songs and planning tours and videos for the Sandwitches, she's also busy creating watercolor and pen portraits for San Francisco galleries. 

You can find the Sandwitches album How To Make Ambient Sadcake on iTunes. And you can hear the Sandwitches perform Wednesday night in San Francisco at The Bottom of the Hill.  You can also listen to them on their MySpace page or view their music videos on YouTube. 

You can see Grace Cooper and the Sandwitches this Wednesday in San Francisco. The show is at 9 p.m. Bottom of the Hill , 
1233 17th Street (17th @ Missouri), San Francisco.