Cady Groves might have just finished her High School Nation Tour, but that didn’t mean to she was to stop the performances.
Cady, along with her new record label Vel Records, put together a fun scavenger hunt in New York City for fans to attend a private acoustic performance. Using the app Swarm, fans were sent to 5 locations in the city and then invited to join Cady to listen to her latest project Dreams EP (available on Soundcloud).
When asked how Cady came up with the concept of a scavenger hunt, she said her record label actually came up with the idea and she was in New York at the time and so they scrambled to put it together in three days. Of course, Cady had a lot of say in the places the fans went because she based them on places that meant something to her.
“I just received some love and some shoes from Minnetonka so we incorporated that into the scavenger hunt. They had to stop at a shoe store and you know like find a pair of Minnetonka’s and then there’s like a picture of me on the wall at the Cowgirl Bar so fans had to go to the Cowgirl Bar and find my picture and that was like their next clue so it’s just cool. It just worked out. Of course they had to stop by a cupcake shop because I obviously loves snacks. We just sort of mapped out within a mile radius of cool places that kind of represent me and have a little piece of my heart in them and it led them to me and I played a show for them at Contesta Hair Salon and it was super intimate and I got to hang out with them and eat cupcakes and just sort of hug them all and play my new album for them so it was great.”
CelebSecrets4U sat down with Cady after her show to get the scoop on her new EP and the inspiration behind the songs. She also told us about the relationship that inspired her first two albums, her favorite dish to throw together and her Twitter relationship with John Stamos (lucky!), so make sure to read our Q&A with Cady below.
For more information on Cady Groves, be sure to follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and check out the video of Cady’s fan scavenger hunt below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9T7Rho5VMM
CS4U: You’ve been in New York for about a little over a week now. What have you been up to?
Cady Groves: “I’ve been in New York for about a week and a half. I’ve just been doing a ton of press and a ton of interviews and meetings and just getting a lot of stuff done so it’s been great.”
CS4U: Like you said before, you have your new EP DREAMS out. You said in one of your tweets that your song “Cause I Said No” was inspired by FUN.
Cady Groves: “‘Cause I Said No’ was inspired by FUN. When people ask me, because the one thing people want to do when they interview an artist — it’s unfortunate but I’ve kind of come to a comfortable answer with it — is people want to put you in a category…what would you say you sound like. They always want to ask ‘what do you sound like? Do you sound like Adele meets Taylor Swift or do you sound like so and so meets this?’ So my answer to that is I kind of sound like Kacey Musgraves meets FUN. I feel like that’s the perfect sort of marriage of voices for my album. ‘Cause I Said No’ was definitely inspired by FUN but also the realness of country music/Kacey Musgraves and all that.”
CS4U: You also said that “Oil & Water” makes you cry whenever you listen to it.
Cady Groves: “I can’t even listen to ‘Oil & Water.’ Yeah like it’s so emotional.”
CS4U: What is the song about?
Cady Groves: “I was engaged to someone and I thought that was going to be the rest of my life and still haven’t dated anyone since then. It’s been two years and he got married right after we broke up and I was so devastated and still healing like I can’t get over it. It’s so hard. I can’t date anyone, can’t look at anyone the same and still feel like that was supposed to be my life, and I chose music over that and still feel like that’s the right decision but it breaks my heart every day so that’s ‘Oil & Water’ for me.”
CS4U: You just finished a tour. How was that?
Cady Groves: “I just finished a two-month High School Nation Tour. It was amazing. I got to play for anywhere between 3,000 to 7,000 kids a day. I played my whole album for them except ‘Oil & Water.’ I mean, like I said, I can’t play that song. I can’t do it yet. It’s like super emotional. When you’re an artist and write a song or whatever, writing something from the heart, you give a lot of yourself to the music if you really really write your songs, so when you write a song like ‘Oil & Water,’ it’s like how a I supposed to play that live, and I still can’t do it. I got to get passed it, so yeah didn’t play that one live but we played the other four songs. The tour went amazing — got to see tons of high school kids and just connect with them and hug them. It was so great to be on the road again and to be on a tour bus. I mean, who wouldn’t love to be on a tour bus and get to see the entire US?”
CS4U: You went to culinary school so do you have a special dish you like to cook?
Cady Groves: “Currently we’re having this interview at Cowgirl Bar, which is like a Mexican place. I love love love love love chips and salsa. Everyone knows this about me I’m like straight up chips and salsa, but also, guacamole is my favorite dish to make and I make the best guacamole ever.”
CS4U: We saw that John Stamos just followed you on Twitter.
Cady Groves: “He followed me for like three years and we like legit had a friendship. We would DM each other and stuff and then I think I got a little too sexual for him. I don’t know (laughs). One time a fan tweeted at him and he was like ‘Cady Groves is racy’ and I was like ‘oh my god besos like you think I’m racy…that’s so hot,’ but then he unfollowed me one time and I was like ‘that’s not cool’ so I tweeted him last week like ‘yo, what the heck…why did you unfollow me?’ and then he followed me again so like we’re dating again. I just can’t take all of this break-up/make-up stuff like I don’t understand it. But no I do have a photo of him holding up a sign that says ‘I love Cady Groves.’ No, he loves me. He said so himself.”
CS4U: Since we are CelebSecrets4U, can you tell us a secret about yourself that your fans may not know?
Cady Groves: “My first two albums Life of a Pirate and A Month of Sundays are about the same guy. It was my first boyfriend and I didn’t get a boyfriend until I was 18 and already graduated from college. I was like really really slow to understand men and he is the person that taught me everything I know about music and he was a musician and I knew nothing about music and we moved in together in Phoenix, which is the reason I wrote the song ‘Phoenix.’ I mean, he’s the reason for those first two albums. I know that so many of my fans really connect to those first two albums that were self-released by me, so there’s one person behind all of that and it’s one guy. I won’t tell you his name, but he is the reason I really really really started all of this, so I kind of owe that to him, in a way, for breaking my heart. Thank you (laughs).”
