ANTHONY GRANT LOVES IT ALL

Anthony Grant is no stranger to putting in extra work.

After practices, Grant goes into the locker room with the rest of the Comets, and then comes right back out to the turf with free-weights in hand for extra training.

His hard work is paying off on the field-- in last week’s match against St. Louis, Grant’s 2 goals and 1 assist resulted in an honorable mention for MASL’s team of the week. Another team of the week mention came earlier in the season when Grant tallied a hat trick against Milwaukee.

Grant’s habit of going the extra mile has an impact on his life away from the pitch as a music producer.

“You as a producer have to do pretty much all the work, for promotions, for the music itself,” said Grant. “The artist goes in the booth --which is tough as well, to be honest-- and records, but the producer has the rest of the workload to put together everything and make sure everything is right, if you want the song to be successful.”

Making sure everything is right if you want to be successful. It’s that if that drives Anthony Grant in both the arena and the studio.

“Pretty much music and soccer, two full-time jobs.” detailed Grant. “I try to balance them, and it’s tough as a professional athlete because you have to go out on the field and put in the work once, twice, three times a day, and then balance it with the music as well, which takes a lot of time.”

Both music and soccer have been in Grant’s life for as long as he can remember.

“I started music from when I was in 3, going to basic school back home, I used to perform with the national arena-- that’s where the events take place, and I’d with my school and I’d perform.” recalled Grant. “So I’ve been doing music since I knew myself, at the same time as soccer. I’m a producer and composer, a writer... and a recording artist now.”

Grant has produced music available on all digital streaming platforms for many years; his songs are produced under his own record label, ASG Records. ‘Love It’, Grant’s newest track and the first on which he is the vocalist, will be released the evening of Jan 4. 

“As I said, there’s a lot that goes into it, so I have to take my time with the tracks that I do. They take months of preparation to get everything together before the release-- at least half a year.” said Grant. “I’m the [vocal] artist, so I produced it, I composed the beat and the song was pretty much co-written by me and a fellow artist from Virginia.

“Over seven or eight months now I’ve been working to get ‘Love It’ out. Finished it completely like 4 months ago, and then the other stuff is the most important part, which is the promotional part, so I’ve been working a lot for the past 4 or 5 months on that.”

Grant’s lifelong love for music is made clear when he begins describing the process of producing a song. His eyes light up, he smiles, and he rubs his hands together eagerly.

“So here’s the thing: First and foremost you’ve got to have a nice little mood to get the beat done. Based on how you’re feeling, that’s pretty much what’s on the beat.

And then after that if you’re producing-- you’re not the artist, you can email stuff to some artist: ‘Hey, I have this track that I think you would do well on.’ 

And they’re going to say: ‘Alright, send me a sample.’ And you send them a sample, you see if they like it, now you sign off on some stuff-- you have to put this business part first because that can get you in trouble later-- And then after the signing off, they record on it. After the recording, they send you the files, and you have to do the mixing and mastering for the final production,” said Grant.

Grant himself has an eclectic music taste, but his reasoning behind his wide selection of favorite songs is deeper than simply being easy to please.

“I listen to all genres, to be honest. A lot of times my friends hear me singing a song, and whether it’s country, pop, dance, reggae, they’re like: ‘How do you know that song?’” laughed Grant, “I just listen to music in general-- I like all types of music. Music is an art, it’s creative, you know? It pulls me toward it.”

He hopes that his own songs can reflect his love for all genres of music, including his newest single ‘Love It’.

“It’s under the genre ‘dance’, because of the type of instrumentals, but it has a lot of crossover with it. I like the tropical feeling as well, with the dance-- when you hear this beat, you want to move along,” sad Grant.

Grant creates music with his all-inclusive tastes in mind-- he wants ‘Love It’ to be a song that inspires all fellow music lovers to dance and sing along.

“It could be played in a club, but it’s all clean lyrics, from day one,” said Grant, “I want everyone to listen to it, I don’t want to put it out for only one audience, I want all age groups to be able to listen to it.

“It’s clean, it’s catchy -- I think-- especially the chorus, I think it’s a little bit catchy,”

Grant finishes the sentence with a wink that makes it easy to see the hard work he puts into both soccer and music is driven by love and joy. Joy that he hopes to spread to others on or off the field.

“I have other stuff coming out later in the year, so I’m looking forward to that. Maybe a music video! I’m definitely going to try to do something with my teammates, promotional-wise!” said Grant.

Today, Grant will be working on promoting ‘Love It’, but he will certainly not lose focus before Sunday afternoon, when he and the Comets host the Florida Tropics to fight for this season’s elusive first home win.