Michael Grimes is a double bass player with a distinctive voice on his instrument. He is also a talented songwriter, and his new album Behind the Goodwill is a testament to this fact. The flavor is distinctively dark and mellow and at times the album comes off like the bastard son of Tom Waits, Los Lobos, and James Bond on quaaludes. Behind the Goodwill is a murky soundtrack to a rainy day featuring low-rider Latin beats and sinister spy guitars, cuban mandolins, dark tangos, gypsy rhythms, and crime-scene saxophones. Songs and stories draw on imagery from disparate sources such as beat storytellers Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller, forties and fifties crime stories, gypsy culture, and even the story of Romeo and Juliet. A seasoned player, Michael has shared the stage with musicians including Howe Gelb (Giant Sand), members of Calexico, Karl Denson's Tiny Universe, Bernadette Seacrest and her Yes Men, the Mulvalina Voo Voo, Ninth Street Overpass and many others. "Grimes' instrumental music is at once funky and ethereal. He may be the only guy around playing Latin-tinged funk on the mandolin." -Mel Minter Albuquerque the Magazine "What's more soothing to the ears than listening to masterful picking on stringed instruments like the acoustic bass and mandolin? Michael Grimes from Albuquerque, N. Mex., isn't satisfied with working in a single genre; instead, he combines Latin jazz rhythms with such disparate details as cocktail-ish guitar and, most surprisingly, mandolin--a sound that has long been familiar to fans of traditional American folk and bluegrass music. These intricate melodies are sure to awaken your spirit." -Download.com