An Oral History of Grippin Grain

Author’s note: If you’re looking for a fitting soundtrack while reading this article, be sure to check out one of the many Grippin Grain playlists from back in the day here.

Club nights and parties are an ephemeral thing, for the most part gone as quick as they come, with only the dancefloor photos and a few hazy memories to preserve their existence. Winnipeg hip-hop has a long history of nights dedicated to hearing exclusively rap music, from Plan B in the late '90s to Ill Rap Jams in the mid 2000s, and many others at clubs like Whispers, Café Zanzy, and way back to LimeTree in the late '80s. But as the new millennium neared the end of its first decade, a transition was happening in hip-hop and music in general. CDs were dying, that much was clear; vinyl was only just starting its renaissance; and digital music platforms didn't really have the bandwidth to execute streaming yet. In an era of LimeWire and Soulseek, theoretically all the music was available to you, it just wasn't yet as simple as it has become.

In Winnipeg, in 2009, a space was developing for a new twist on a type of party that had been happening for at least a decade, but which had roots way back in the early days of hip-hop. Instead of having a dance party at an established nightclub, why not throw your event at a venue primarily known for hosting rock and roll or punk shows. Replacing the slick aesthetic of premium liquor with the grimy feel of cheap beer, a party could be stripped of all its pretensions with the focus exclusively on the music and having fun with your friends.

Seeing this space and the opportunity to develop it was DJ Frasier, then known as DJ Footwerk, who had been building up his name and his chops in the local scene for about five years by 2009 with parties like Nutty Klub. The idea for a new kind of party came to him with the simple idea of: I want to play the music I listen to at home for people at a party.

DJ Frasier: You know, generally speaking, at that time, [the] club scene would have been Top 40 or like big room electronic. I think the acronym EDM still hadn't come into being in 2009, but there would have been a little bit of an electroclash influence, and I definitely played those parties too, I played that music as well. But I was interested in having a place where I could play Three 6 Mafia and UGK and T.I., for example.

Frasier of course knew he needed some fellow DJs to help him build this night to its full potential, and he had in mind DJs Co-op and Lonnie Ce.

DJ Co-op: I guess most nightclubs, you certainly wouldn’t hear rap all night. You might hear a little bit of rap mixed in with whatever the night was, or if it’s just a club night, Top 40, some rap, some throwbacks, some of this and some of that. And then, you know, the rap that was coming out then was exciting, people wanted to hear it and a lot of people didn’t necessarily want to go to a nightclub, you know. If we’re talking about the Jeezy era and then all the Houston stuff that was blowing up, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010; it was just right.

Lonnie Ce: At a 420 sale I was DJing [at local head shop The Urban Bakery], this guy was kinda watching me from the bottom of the stairs and he had his DJ bag with him, and it was Frasier, [DJ Footwerk] at the time. We had never met before or seen each other before but I played my set and I was playing a bunch of UGK and Frasier came and was just like, 'Hey man, I really like all that rap you're playing.' He was like, 'I think it's time we start playing rap at the parties again.' And I was just like, yeah, absolutely, I'm all about that. I started DJing because I couldn't go out and hear hip-hop all night, you know, that's why I started DJing in the first place. And then I met Frasier and he kind of made that comment and I was just like, yeah, dude, that's why I'm doing this, that's why I want to DJ. He's like, ‘Yeah, I'm thinking about starting a rap party.’

DJ Co-op: Let the record show that it was Frasier’s idea to do it and it was Frasier who came up with the name as well.

Lonnie Ce: [Months later] I get a message from him on Facebook saying, 'Hey, it's me, Frasier, about that rap party, I think I'm going to do it, I want to call it Grippin Grain and if I can get a hold of DJ Co-op, I want to do this thing with you.' That was kind of the genesis of the Grippin Grain parties.

DJ Frasier: I guess the impetus for throwing Grippin Grain was just to play rap songs at a dive bar and invite our friends.

 Out of all three of the DJs, DJ Co-op brought the most experience to the table, with roughly a decade of collaboration with local stalwart DJ Hunnicutt under his belt for their various parties, as well as being the lead organizer for the Ill Rap Jam events at the Collective Cabaret.

DJ Frasier: You know, [Co-op's] parties on his own and his parties with [DJ Hunnicutt] were already kind of established as a prototype for Winnipeg dance parties that I looked up to at that time, so having [Co-op] involved was validating, for sure. And Lonnie and I crossed paths when he was working at The Urban Bakery, which is in its own right kind of a cultural institution.

DJ Co-op: At that point, I had definitely started touring with [Hunnicutt] quite a bit, we're talking 2009, for sure, because we started doing parties in 2000. I think I started backing up Pip [Skid] at that point. Frasier was the one who had the idea that he wanted to do a rap party, because Frasier was very organized. He had certain nights that he was doing where he was playing dance music and he really wanted to do a rap party and he knew that I was a rap guy, and we knew Lonnie as well because he was [rapper John Smith]'s brother and he worked at Urban Bakery and we knew he was getting into DJing. So, that was kind of a natural choice. Definitely Frasier's idea to put the three of us together.

 Dubbed Grippin Grain in homage to the many, many southern rap songs that reference having a wood grain steering wheel as part of a custom car, as well as alluding to our province's well known production of wheat, the alliterative title worked on several levels and it stuck.

Lonnie Ce: The first one was at the Windsor Hotel. And then the second, third, fourth, fifth ones would have been at the time the Standard [now the Handsome Daughter]. The first one was at the Windsor, that was September '09, I think. The first one didn't really pop off, most of the people were just in the back lane crushing king cans. It wasn't really a success (laughs).

DJ Co-op: The first one we did at the Windsor, nobody went. I mean, a handful of people went. People just hung out in the alley and drank beers and weren’t coming in, so eventually we just let everybody in for free, just to get bodies in.

Lonnie Ce: A few months later, Frasier reached out and was just, like, 'Yeah, I think we should do it again but at the Standard,' which was a smaller room. You don't need that many people in that back room at the Daughter to make it look it's popping, right? We didn't call [it] Grippin Grain 1 thinking that there would be a Grippin Grain 2. We just called it Grippin Grain. And it didn't pop off and I wasn't sure if we were going to do one again but Frasier reached out and we tried it again at the Standard. That one popped off and then we realized, okay, this might be something.

DJ Co-op: The ones at the Standard were awesome. There's that one photo album of me standing on top of the piano with the mic; it was just great, just like a house party. Yeah, fuckin' chaos. I remember us being at capacity early and then my friends texting me to let them in the back door, and to everyone who asked, I was, like, sure, I'll let you in the back door and I won't even make you pay but you just have to buy me a shot.

 Grippin Grain would become instantly recognizable for its poster art, taking what is often a throwaway with little more importance than communicating the date and location of the party into a high art masquerading as simplistic collage, with roots in an earlier event. But in the early days while attempting to find their footing, the party would follow more of a traditional poster route.

DJ Co-op: We got my buddy Rhek from Vancouver to do the art. The very first one Frasier did the poster. And then we paid Rhek to do a really nice poster, which we sort of modified for the next three after that; two, three and four.

Lonnie Ce: Frasier made a pretty basic flyer with the name kind of in blinged out typeface, and we used that for the first one. And then for I'm pretty sure the second one, that's when we hired Rhek, super talented artist out of Vancouver, for the next kind of version of the poster, which had a purple overlay and just had a prairie kind of landscape with Gucci Mane like huge in the background and some photos of us. 

DJ Frasier: [Co-op] threw a party called the Ill Rap Jam, and [he] did most of the flyers for that event and you can see the [cut and paste] style. The Grippin Grain style is kind of cribbed from [Co-op]'s own poster work on the Ill Rap Jams.

Lonnie Ce: We couldn't afford to keep hiring Rhek to make new posters, so we just kind of DIYed it, [Co-op] was, like, 'Okay, well, I'll make the next one.' So, that's when [Co-op] started doing, like the kind of classic Grip style, which was similar to his Ill Rap Jam posters from years prior, that cut and paste kind of DIY style.

DJ Co-op: We did put a very strong professional effort into making the posters, even though the posters looked janky, it was a very intentional aesthetic to them, obviously.

DJ Frasier: I mean, working with a professional designer, you need some bread to pay them but you [also] need to give them proper lead up time and communication. And I imagine when we switched the style up, it was a little bit, we probably needed to launch a poster like right away (laughs) like the next morning or something. We probably had a thing booked, you know.

 As DJ Co-op began to perfect his style, the posters eventually would become an artform, with the cut and paste images organized around a theme, usually something that was at the forefront of popular culture, often but not always with a hip-hop focus, with plenty of Easter eggs for those in the know to discover.

Lonnie Ce: We would book a date for Grip and we would be like two weeks out and then someone would hit the group chat, like, oh shit we gotta do a poster. Then we would just be, like, okay, well what's happened in the last month, what's happened in hip-hop in the last month, you know, what new song's popped off, what funny shit did DJ Khaled do on Snapchat or what insane thing did Kanye tweet, you know, it would be what happened in the last few weeks.

DJ Co-op: I'm so glad we went with all that stuff that was sort of ripped from the headlines or making waves. You know, to my point earlier about putting a lot of care into the posters, we put a lot of work into figuring that out. A lot of that came from Lonnie, he was that terminally online dude, like we were all on it, but Lonnie especially, you know, on Twitter, whatever, you know, what's popping off, yeah, part of the zeitgeist, maybe a little bit funny but also just kind of noteworthy.

DJ Frasier: I think it being a collage style poster really does give an idea of where our heads were at, like yeah, these things are related. I don't think everyone who attends Grippin Grain understood every witticism on those flyers, but a lot of people did.

 Part of the appeal of the party not being tied to one nightclub meant that Grippin Grain could rove around, searching for a bigger or better suited venue as it outgrew its earlier homes.

Lonnie Ce: I can't imagine there was more than three [at the Standard], and then from there we moved to the Albert because we were packing the Standard, the capacity there was probably legally like a hundred or something and we were packing them pretty good. We moved up in cap to the Albert after that, and then the next handful [were] there.

DJ Co-op: I remember from the Albert era, all of us hustled and worked really hard to promote Grippin Grain, and that's probably why it stayed so strong for so long, why good people kept coming out and having a good time.

DJ Frasier: Part of the special thing about Grippin Grain is that we just managed to time this party at the beginning of the decade where there were artists and songs that would be beloved. But in 2009, there was no Waka Flocka Flame, right? We started a party called Grippin Grain that was perfect for Flocka's energy, and this party and the dance floor was there for "Hard in the Paint" and stuff like that. Those songs didn't exist in 2009; they were on their way. The influences that led to those sounds were available, and so anyway, if that kind of makes sense about the vision and the impetus to find a reoccurring home for that music in Winnipeg.

 While known mostly in the annals of Winnipeg music history as a legendary punk rock venue, hosting bands like Husker Du, Green Day, and Black Flag, the Royal Albert Arms Hotel did also host some important local hip-hop shows through the 2000s, leading it to become the third location for Grippin Grain.

Lonnie Ce: Early on at the Albert, we were playing a lot of Lil B, and doing the cooking dance was a thing at the time, and Dave Dub-L was taking photos for us in that era and he brought a bunch of cooking props to the Albert, like aprons and whisks and spoons, that was probably the first time we actually had props and stuff, and that was all Dave Dub-L.

DJ Frasier: Shout out to Dave Dub-L, who was the general manager at Union Sound Hall, and who also used to take photos at some of the other events; he used to shoot photos at the Albert from time to time. Andrew Chipman was the photographer of many early Grippin Grains. Yeah, we should be giving other photographers a shout out; Jared Will, for sure. [Other photographers who deserve mention include: Daks, Cole, and Khammy.]

 Another aspect of the party that helped keep the crowd engaged was having a host on the microphone to shout out people in the audience, do ad libs of the songs, and just generally help give more of a party atmosphere. It took a few installments before it became official, but local rapper John Smith [now Bazooka Joe 204], who also happened to be Lonnie’s older brother, was an obvious choice.

Lonnie Ce: I think [my brother] would just naturally by the end of the night end up on the mic just to shout people out and yell and sing along with some songs and shit. And we kinda just made that more of an official thing where it was hosted by John Smith as well, which was super fun obviously.

DJ Co-op: That was important to us to have someone [as a host]. I mean, that’s just what you did, especially back then. Just having a host who was an excellent MC, it makes your night legit. That was the golden era when we had [John Smith] on the mic.

 After about a year and a half at their seedy home, Grippin Grain was the party that ended up closing a chapter on the Albert.

DJ Co-op: We did the Albert until we broke the Albert. We were the last show that happened before the water main broke, or something broke, yeah. And then it got sold and there wasn’t really anything popping at the Albert after that. So our first night at Ozzy’s was called Grippin Grain: We Might Have Broken the Albert, that was the title of it.

Lonnie Ce: Windsor, Standard, Albert, and then from there we might have moved up to the Pyramid, we were outgrowing the Albert I think anyway, so I think we went to the Pyramid after that.

 As the 2010s marched on, the music at Grippin Grain began to evolve, with a strong base of Southern rap, subgenres like trap and drill began to become more prominent in the culture and found their way into the DJs Serato playlists.

DJ Co-op: Southern rap was the inspiration and the jumping off point, for sure, you know, and the Rick Ross bangers, [plus songs] like "Stay Fly," "International Players Anthem," and those are definitely the pillars. But it wasn't exclusively Southern rap at all. Eventually we added a tag line, strictly club rap all night. We played all the new club bangers, even if they weren't Southern; we played Southern classics; a few years in, when the DJ Mustard stuff was big, we would play a lot of that. Look, it was still a party in Winnipeg and we couldn't go that deep. I specifically remember how much "Empire State of Mind" would pop off, because that song was a couple of years old at that point, and so we're playing that, which was basically a pop song. It's not like it was all deep cuts all night, we tried to work in that stuff as much as we could, along with shit that people knew. And that was probably part of the formula for success, if we were just like no, we're only playing underground, Southern rap and trap, it wouldn't have lasted, it wouldn't have been as big, or honestly as fun for us.

Lonnie Ce: When it first started, we were playing a lot of the Southern stuff, so a lot of T.I. and Bone Crusher and UGK and that kind of stuff, stuff that we all loved and that you couldn't hear too often in the club. Also just really new shit that was popping online, like Lil B and like Waka Flocka. Yeah, just doing our best to keep up on the latest music, for sure, the newest stuff, that's what we liked, that's what we wanted to play, that's what people wanted to come out and hear.

DJ Frasier: We would take a song from 12 years ago and connect it with a song that came out that month, or we would do many things, like we would be trying to break a new record, like we think this is a hit. We would try to keep a hit going too, like instead of just shelving it, again I don't want to sound resentful about the pop music industrial churn, but it's interesting for a dance party to be able to hold on to certain songs past their best before dates, you know what I mean.

Lonnie Ce: [During a party] we typically would do twenty minute sets each, and we would just kind of do that throughout the night, twenty, twenty, twenty, until kind of that last, you know, twenty, thirty minutes of the night, when it would just kind of become a free for all, we'd go one for one, or if someone was just really feeling it and crushing it, we would let them have their time, let them do their thing.

 After about four years of moving through at least six different venues, Grippin Grain finally found something of a permanent home when its three DJs, along with a couple of other partners, helped open a venue of their own: Union Sound Hall on Market Avenue in the Exchange District.

Lonnie Ce: We moved to Union [Sound Hall], I think around Grippin Grain 40-ish, about four years in, and I mean, it was really special, because all three of us were involved, were part-owners of Union. For me personally, the only reason I had money to put up for Union is because Grippin Grain was doing so well and I was able to save some paper. To go from the Windsor, which wasn't really popping, like that first one wasn't super busy by any means, right, so to go from there to eventually owning our own spot and being able to throw the party there, it was obviously super cool. Union was from around 40 to I think 70-ish, so likely the most Grippin Grains happened at Union, for sure.

 With a venue of their own, and a larger one at that, the possibilities increased, leading to some of the most creative and successful Grippin Grain parties.

Lonnie Ce: One that sticks out immediately, we threw an unofficial Juno's after party there. The Juno's were in town and it must have happened on a Sunday, so we knew Ryan Hemsworth was going to be in town, he was nominated for a Juno. I'm pretty sure he won that night, so we booked Ryan Hemsworth to play an all hip-hop set at the after party, the unofficial Juno after party, and that was a memorable night. We ended up getting an impromptu Rich Kidd performance at like 2:30 in the morning, and I think Shad was hanging out and bopping around and so that was definitely a really memorable Grip at Union, for sure.

 With the party becoming such a success in Winnipeg, there became a few opportunities to take Grippin Grain on the road, bringing the power of beer and yelling to new cities.

DJ Frasier: Scott Wade is a Winnipeg punk scene dude that [Co-op]'s known for years and years, so we had that contact and he was booking Parts & Labour, which was one of Matty Matheson's restaurant projects in Toronto.

Lonnie Ce: We did two or three in Toronto at Parts & Labour. I think the first one we did there went super well, we had a huge lineup and then we got a text the next morning from the bar that we broke sales records for Parts & Labour that night, or something like that. We had [DJ] Big Jacks come out and play with us, and there [are] so many ex-Winnipeggers living in Toronto, so yeah, we were super fortunate that all these ex-Winnipeggers came out and partied. They were great, they were a lot of fun. It was kind of wild to think, it was definitely a gamble because none of us are from Toronto, we're not Toronto DJs, so to go there and throw a party was definitely a bit of a gamble, but it worked out really well.

DJ Frasier: There's the thing about when we played in Saskatoon, I do remember from Saskatoon joint that the venue's name was Amigo's and I remember being pretty proud of myself for folding back the A on their venue banner on stage so that it just said Migos, when it was in around the time that Migos was dominating.

Lonnie Ce: The Saskatoon one we played at a bar called Amigo's where a lot of rap shows and stuff had happened [there], so of course we turned it into just Migos on the poster.

DJ Frasier: The plan wasn't for it to be a road show, we were happy when it was convenient to go play friendly venues in those other towns, but it wasn't something we aspired to do permanently or more regularly. I think that's part of how Grippin Grain has such an impact legacy is that we didn't oversaturate the party locally or otherwise. You'll see that it wasn't even monthly, and it was so well attended that it had the opportunity to become weekly or to happen more frequently, but I don't think it would have been as much fun or stuck [around] for so long or maybe be so well remembered if we burnt out, you know what I mean.

 Along with the cut and paste collage posters replete with images of celebrities and rappers, another big part of the Grippin Grain aesthetic developed from an accidental misspelling that came from a ubiquitous question the three DJs would receive.

Lonnie Ce: It would happen a lot, people would ask "when's the next Grippin Grain" a lot. I'd be working at TUB [The Urban Bakery] and customers and pals and stuff would come through and that was always a big question.

DJ Co-op: I remember where that phrase came from and that misspelling. I did it at Ozzy's, in the early moments of one of the events. I had a meme template of a DJ saying something and I was, like, oh this is good, he should be asking when's the next Grippin Grain. It was an honest mistake, me spelling it wrong, again maybe I was a few drinks in at that point, and I just wrote up this meme template, "wehn's the next Grippin Grain" and then sent it in a group chat or something. And everyone laughed at it and someone pointed out I spelled "when" wrong, and then it just kind of stuck.

DJ Frasier: I think that was a common question that we all got on social media and in text messages, yeah. And then I think it was [Co-op] that latched onto that as a hallmark for the brand, or at least a suitable Instagram username.

DJ Co-op: It's probably why I made it a meme because people were asking, like I'd just run into people who'd be, like, 'Hey, when's the next Grippin Grain,' and so we liked latching onto that.

 After a longer than usual run, with the party actually claiming to be Winnipeg's longest running club night [only to be corrected that it was the second longest, behind the Palomino Club's infamous Booty Shake Mondays] Grippin Grain began to approach two nice, round numbers as the 2010s neared their end.

Lonnie Ce: It was the ten year anniversary, yeah, it was ten years, it was December 31st, 2019, so it was basically the end of the decade. We had thrown a hundred parties, we had been doing it for ten years. For me personally it was just like this was too good, [I] just thought it was perfect timing to kind of wrap this thing up, right? [Co-op] was in school, Frasier wasn't DJing as much, like he kind of stepped back from DJing, and we were coming up on this number, where it was, like, yeah, end of the decade, ten years, a hundred parties. I don't want this thing to fall off, I don't want it to die a slow death, I don't want people to be, like, oh remember that party, oh yeah, the last few sucked, or we don't go anymore because it sucks, right? We were still drawing big crowds and doing really well, but it just seemed like kind of the perfect time to end on a high note and not drag it out any longer, you know.

DJ Frasier: Well, I mean, like I was saying earlier about not burning this thing out by having it occur too frequently, I think it's that same attitude that we wanted to go out with people wanting more rather than being oversaturated or annoyed with the thing. And one of the milestones was ten years, so I guess that kind of happened in the fall [of 2019], and then another milestone was a hundred [parties], and those things didn't line up exactly; that just shows the interval at which they happened on average, I don't know, [every] 1.25 months, type shit. It was just a really round number, after more than a decade, a hundred parties, and then that lining up with New Year's Eve. You know, a couple of guys had started households with their life partners, and we knew it couldn't go on forever. So, that just seemed right, and so that was the intention to make it the last one, and then it was reinforced by COVID cracking and shutting down hospitality get togethers in March.

Lonnie Ce: I know, yeah, two months later the whole fuckin' world shut down and we wouldn't have been able to throw them for a few years anyway, right? So, it did work out, I guess.

DJ Frasier: We were really blessed that we got to go out on our terms like that with all those milestones kind of in sync with one another, because if we had left it any longer, we would have lost out on that choice to end it on our terms. So, we were really blessed to be able to say goodnight to Grippin Grain that way. You know, in the nightclub culture, in any era, that's I think a very rare thing, so I think, yeah, the three of us, from our perspective, [were] very pleased with how things wound up.

 After officially ending Grippin Grain's run on New Year's Eve 2019, the party seemed to have lived its final chapter, played its final Waka Flocka song, had its last beer and yelling. But out of the ashes, Grippin Grain rose for one very last time, sparked by the sad closure of one of Winnipeg's iconic venues.

Lonnie Ce: The Good Will announced that they were shutting down in the fall of, I don't know if that was 2024, maybe [it was 2023]. They announced that they were shutting down so we reached out to [Good Will general manager and former Union Sound Hall bartender] Mean Mike and pitched the idea of doing one more Grip, one final, final Grip. Part of the reason for that was those guys were our pals, all the Good Will dudes were homies and we thought it'd be fun to just help send it off and try to give them a really busy night. And for us, we never got to do one at the Good Will, so it was our last chance to do it at one of our favourite venues. I think it had been four years and we went through the pandemic and all that shit, it just kind of felt like the right time to try to get together and do one last, last one.

DJ Frasier: There was the one hundred and first Grippin Grain, which I was not involved with as a DJ, but I gave my full blessing to bring it out of retirement. I think it's a bit of a drink the bar dry, closing programming at the Good Will, which is a legendary venue that [Co-op] was a shareholder/owner operator at, and that was never a home for Grippin Grain until that night, so I think that's a cool thing.

 With already one reunion under their belts, the possibility of course exists for others to occur, but don't hold your breath, as Grippin Grain has likely come to its natural end.

Lonnie Ce: Like I said I'm a fan of things going out on a high note, you know. Yeah, I don't think there's plans for another reunion, although I love hanging out and playing with Frasier and [Co-op], so I'd like to DJ with them again, but I don't think it would be under the Grippin Grain banner.