Post- ‘post-final-solo-show-solo-show’, I’m very psyched to be playing an opening set for Elk City’s record release show (that new record, Above the Water came out Friday). I'll be doing a shortish set, and in the spirit (pun) of pending halloween - and if I can get some rehearsing poop together today - may skew towards covers. We’ll see.
Also playing is Love, Burns; Bob van Pelt; Renée (of Elk City) will be making art in real time* along w/ the very awesome John Adam Fahey a/k/a K00K all hosted by Hoboken’s own, the hilarious Jack Silbert. It’s a whole thing and I'm honored to be invited.
(*if you haven’t seen Renée's art work, she’s great and has been prob. the most incredibly productive person through the pandemic that I know).
All that is this Thursday, the 27th, at Mama Tried in Brooklyn. Show starts around 7:00 (I think I'm playing around then) and it’s free(!).
I first ‘met' Elk City, or at least Renée & Ray, back when they were still known as the Melting Hopefuls. It was 1993, we (wrens) had signed our first recording contract (Grass Records), which came with what seemed then (and honestly, still seems now) to be an ambitiously, even comically, large recording advance of $2,000. At mostly my behest, we chose the Just Enough Rope To… option of spending that money on then-state-of-the-art recording equipment to continue our d.i.y./home-recording...um...vision quest of self-discovery. For 1993, that meant an ADAT 8-track digital S-VHS tape recorder.
Sonically iffy, functionally hideous but at the time, musically liberating (15 tracks!).
We eagerly took our windfall to Victor’s House of Music in Ridgewood, NJ (not the location on Rt. 17 that is now a Guitar Center but back when it was in that strip mall multiple-store-fronts outfit on Ridgewood Rd. or whatever). We were with the salesperson, dotting the final i's on our obsolete-as-you-drive-it-home package-purchase, when down the hall, going into another demo studio/room with their own salesperson, I saw what was clearly another band (clear because they looked…well, cool, like a cool band, whereas we looked, I don’t know, like mall employees ambition-ing into shift-management positions).
I asked our salesperson who they were - “Oh that’s the Melting Hopefuls. They’re also buying a bunch of recording equipment and are awesome”..etc. etc.
So ‘met’ is in quotes above because we didn’t meet per se, I saw them at the end of a hallway, made vague nervous eye contact and left it at that until years later when Ray & I attended one of the awesome Tape Op recording conventions together and we’ve all remained friends since.
They’ve gone through a lot of changes & iterations since then but Elk City for the last bunch of years has evolved into a veritable indie rock-ish super group w/ Sean Eden (Luna), Richard Baluyut (Versus) and Chris Robertson (Feed). And this new record is, to me, the most ‘band sounding’ record of theirs yet (and the guitar work is fantastic). It’s awesome, seek it out, play loudly, see you hopefully Thursday.
And thanks as always,
charles
