not running correct app; cwd problems

I have app.js in the root directory and I do a build; copying app.js to 'dist'. I then have grunt-express-server configured to use the script path.join(dist, pkg.main) -- in other words dist/app.js. The server starts, but it appears to be running app.js out of root, not out of dist. I know this because part of the dist build is generating a sass stylesheet and replacing the non-sass one. When I view the stylesheet in the browsers inspector from the running grunt-express-server process it's not the sass one. If I cd into dist and just start the app (node app) the resulting stylesheet is the sass-based one. Similarly if I'm in the root directory and I say node dist/app it's not the sass-based one. So it may not be an express-server problem per se, it may be with node itself however if you had a cwd option versus what script should I start and I'll just run from root it seems like it might be fixable.

kind regards,