“When you start a Grandmaster record, it’s supposed to feel like a festival, like things are kicking off,” says Nick Leon, sitting on a Nickelodeon logo-colored couch in his living room. “It’s like a classical fanfare meets Seventies disco funk – and there’s also medieval elements.”
Leon (piano, electric piano, clavinet, vocals) and his nine bandmates – Blaise Eldred (piano, organ, synthesizer, vocals), Connor Mizell (drums, vocals, CGI, cinematography, design), Kenneth Frost (keytar, vocals), Sydney Harding-Sloan (vocals, vocal effects), Jaxon Casey (harp, vocoder, vocals), Bryce Brown (bass guitar), Greer James (videography, editing), Nick Dow (guitar), and Quinn Decker (percussion, web design) – have captivated local audiences with this theatrical quality since their first show in 2023. They perform their self-described “medieval funk” in black suits, cover their eyes with black shades, and wear hats that kinda sorta recall the Devo energy domes.
Now winners of the 2024-2025 Austin Music Award for Best New Act, the musicians label themselves loyal Zealots to 11th member the Grandmaster, a red-eyed, guitar-shredding figure who remains shrouded in mystery.
Out of uniform at the North Campus Grandmaster house, the band members explain how they joined the collective. Most of their origin stories start with Leon. The co-founder met Mizell in high school before going off to study at the Berklee College of Music, where he met Eldred. As Leon, Eldred, and Mizell eventually made their way to Austin and started their own creative endeavors, they formed Grandmaster. Musicians from a slew of established Austin acts rounded out the band – Harding-Sloan plays in Hey! Cowboy, Frost plays in Sexpop/Intellectual Property/Blush Fantasy (formerly the Cuckoos), and Decker plays in Billy Glitter, to untangle just a part of the collective’s musical web.
The original idea for the group, however, sparked from an odd message Leon received.
“In November of 2022, I got an Instagram DM from a scammer who had this bullshit-made secret society that he wanted me to join, and he was calling himself the grand master,” he explains. He details that the scammer attempted to sell him sacred – fake – items that he needed for an initiation ceremony into a society: an “eternal cycle,” a black garment, and a “talisma” among them. The message went on to inspire song titles and lyrics for Grandmaster’s self-titled debut album, released in May 2024.
Eldred expanded the universe with his own ideas. “I was working on a comic book for myself … lore for something that hadn’t even existed yet, and it paired perfectly with the Grandmaster setting,” he explains, showing me a lengthy iPhone note with detailed storyline ideas.
The Zealots try their best to explain key figures, locations, and terminology from the Grandmaster universe: The Grandmaster, who is thousands of years old, is an intergalactic traveler from a system of universes known as the Galacian web. He’s on a quest to collect Galacian Shards from different universes and here on planet Earth, he’s recruiting Zealots to help him out. Each Zealot holds a special “Pillar of Power” and symbol that is unique to each member – Zealot Harding-Sloan is the Pillar of Air, Zealot Frost is the Pillar of Voice, and Zealot James is the Pillar of Light.
Music, filmmaking, and comics help the collective convey the story. The ensemble released a series of episodes à la Star Wars to YouTube in which they visually depict the story of the Grandmaster finding the Zealots. Drummer Mizell and videographer James, plus a slew of other collaborators, spearheaded the films, shot in pieces over a period of months. The artists name Steven Spielberg, Monty Python, Marvel, and Lord of the Rings as their visual inspirations.
The band unleashed their debut album, produced by local jam auteur Nolan Potter, at the Grandmaster Gala, a SIMS Foundation benefit hosted at the State Theatre. The ensemble played Grandmaster in full, and artists created their own Grandmaster-themed works and auctioned them off.
The project draws aural inspirations from Earth, Wind & Fire, John Williams scores, and Nintendo soundtracks. They point to Parliament-Funkadelic as another influence; they even met bassist Bootsy Collins at South by Southwest 2024, a surreal experience that led the group to name their cat (who wandered around the living room during our interview) after the legendary musician.
Grandmaster met Bootsy at a Q&A the musician participated in at the festival and told him their fictitious leader met the artist way back in the Seventies. Collins played along – Zealot James shows me a video of the bassist exclaiming, “And in 1975 we kept the funk alive, with the Grandmaster, baby!”
Though most of the musicians play in several other notable Austin acts, they aren’t sure they consider Grandmaster to be a supergroup.
“I like it and dislike it,” Leon says of the term. “[I like it] in the sense that it is all these people coming together from different groups. What I don’t like about it … People see it like a side project.”
“Yeah, we take this super seriously,” Mizell chimes in.
While they don’t entirely resonate with the term “supergroup,” they do have other words they align with. When asked to describe the Zealotry in one word, Frost offers “family,” while James follows suit with the word “community.”
“We have become a family and are growing a community outside of the project as well,” the videographer says.
“There’s people in England who were Zealots for Halloween,” Leon says, while Eldred adds, “I got a DM from this one dude in Japan that was asking very detailed questions about the lore … It’s so cool to have people that are from other countries that are hearing about us.”
Eyeing LP No. 2, the group hopes to tell the backstory of the Grandmaster, diving deeper into their deity’s universe and introducing new characters. They also have aspirations to make a second season of their YouTube series, which they hope to pitch to TV networks. As their interests for storytelling expand into different mediums, they’ve even toyed with the idea of creating a video game based on the storyline and have plans to release a comic book in the future with the help of artist Terrance Bell. In July, they plan to host a second Grandmaster Gala, this time at the Paramount.
Juggling the ideas and egos of 10 – er, 11 – creatives can be tricky, but despite the stress, “We stick together,” Leon says. “We put ourselves aside and realize this is a beautiful family, and we work through shit together as a family.”
Expanding the Grandmaster unit, the vocalist throws artist Bell and producer Potter in for his final declaration: “It’s a family. It’s more than just a band.”
This article appears in February 28 • 2025.