Photo by Dan Perry
Nederland, Colorado’s Elephant Revival continues to win over new ears and hearts. The quintet, has just released a new studio recording, These Changing Skies after a summer traveling on the festival circuit and beyond. The group will close out the year with two nights at The State Room in Salt Lake City, UT and then in late January it’s off to Europe. In the following conversation the group’s Bonnie Paine and Daniel Rodriguez discuss the Elephant Revival’s origins and their own musical paths.
Some people have called Elephant Revival folk, newgrass, indie, what do you feel your sound or genre is?
Dan: I would describe our sound as a necessary thing we are doing. If I were to step outside and pretend I wasn’t one of the members, and look at it objectively, I would say folk-rock with a Celtic-jazz tinge to it.
Bonnie: I wonder sometimes if when Jazz music first started coming out, before there was a term for it, if people got asked this question, and were like, I don’t know what it is. A lot of our friends are in bands that don’t fit in any kind of category and I wonder if some term is forming, maybe, because it ties in a lot of folk influence and traditional instruments with kind of a modern feel and songs that are original. But, yeah, definitely Celtic, folk, rock, kind of Gypsy.
What have been some of your major musical influences personally?
Dan: I just found this out, but my very first concert I’d ever been to was Richie Havens.
Bonnie: Really?
Dan: Yeah, my mom told me that. That was my very first influence. Then of course, Raffi, “Baby Beluga.” Then I got much older and became really involved in Bob Dylan’s work, his songwriting just really got to me. John Ritter is doing it for me. And, the musicality of Railroad Earth, I’m really drawn to that too.
Bonnie: Yeah, Taj Mahal has been a huge influence. Nina Simon, Billy Holiday, Tracy Chapman. Our friends are in a band called Taarka, and also played in a band called The MuseMeant at one point. Richie Havens was a huge influence on me also.
Being a jam-heavy scene, the Grateful Dead has been very influential to a lot of musicians, have they played any role in your life?
Bonnie: Yeah! Actually that’s one I was just thinking about. Pink Floyd was my first concert, and Grateful Dead was almost my first. My dad was in line for tickets and they sold out just two people ahead of him. It was their last show anywhere near Oklahoma before Jerry Garcia passed. He was about to get tickets for like twenty of us. My whole family was about to tour out there in a little greyhound bus. I love the Grateful Dead, I’ve listened to them my whole life. When I was starting to sing harmonies, my mom suggested I listen back to Grateful Dead again and try out different harmonies that weren’t there to help get more familiar with singing harmonies. They’re awesome, great songwriters.
Dan: I think the Grateful Dead is probably the biggest influence when it comes to breaking down that line where entertainment and….well, they were really like the American Shamans of our culture. They were pre bling-bling music, record label, image, publicity, before all that. They were representing the moment, and what comes out of the moment, what explodes out of the moment, this ecstasy of fans who are just glued to the moment they are expounding upon, and I think that’s hugely important for our culture, and I think Yonder Mountain resurfaces that too, and Leftover Salmon, Railroad Earth…It’s really important for our souls.
How did your band come together, were you all friends before?
Bonnie: Daniel and I met first from the band. We met in 2002. He was working sound in a club, I went to visit my friend in Connecticut, she had moved from Tulsa, so I drove my car out there to meet up with her, see how her life was going, and I ended up running into Daniel and playing music on a rooftop until the sun rose. He’s got such a solid groove. We were playing funk tunes actually, and that didn’t fit into any of those genres we just mentioned, but he’s a very good funky guitar player too. I met the other three members at a Winfield Bluegrass Festival in Winfield, Kansas.
Dan: I met Sage at a Rainbow Gathering (laughs). And, I met Dango at a place called Webb’s World of Fun in Oklahoma. We threw horseshoes for like two hours.
Bonnie, what inspired or lead you to play the washboard, and the saw?
My dad had the idea for me to play the washboard. I played percussion since I was six, with my sisters. They played the drum sets, and I was the youngest so I got to play them when they weren’t in use. My dad noticed that I always tapped my heart when I danced. We were at Winfield Bluegrass Field and he said, “Why don’t we go down and get you some banjo picks and put them on your fingers. Steve Fields said you could borrow his washboard tonight if you wanna walk around the camps.” Winfield has all these spontaneous jams all over, there’s hundreds of groups of music you can step in and out of. It’s a great place to learn a new instrument. So, that’s how the washboard came about. I played in band with my sisters called Mighty Kind, and there was a guy named James Townsend who played guitar and musical saw in that and he let me play his saw one night and he gave it to me for my birthday a week later because we sat down and had so much fun with it. He had a twin saw that went with it so we can play them together.
Do you make your own washboard gloves?
When my grandma died I inherited a hat box full of antique driving gloves that I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with. So, now they’re my washboard gloves, but I’ve worn through almost all of them. I sew banjo picks onto them with dental floss.
Dan, you play both the banjo and the guitar on stage, are you more creatively drawn to one over the other?
I am more creatively drawn to the banjo. I wouldn’t say I’m very good at it so I’m always watching other banjo players and their technique, so I would say creatively as far as problem-solving goes, I think about the banjo in those terms, but I definitely explore on the guitar a lot more because that’s my first instrument. I’m not as good on the banjo because I play guitar all the time.
Do you feel that Elephant Revival has evolved into something unanticipated, or different from when you started out?
Bonnie: For me, originally I started to play music with Dan. I wasn’t aware that everyone was going to be songwriters, but I’m glad that they are. We never had a specific, confined vision. We try to keep it open so it can grow in bigger ways than our expectations would force them into. It started playing songs with Dan, and it was a nice surprise to find out that other people are also writing songs, and let it grow in that way also.
Dan: I think it all started because none of us had expectations, but I would say expectations have grown around it just like anything in life, but I think the solid thing about it is that all of us are trying to break those expectations down and arrive at a pure collaboration.
Do you have any visions of yourselves later as musicians, or things you would like to do?
Dan: I’d like to have a studio one day, maybe get a barn, and build it out and bring in bands that I really love who could maybe use the recording the experience. I would love to nourish that, and other bands…to become more of a producer I guess.
Bonnie: I’d love to work with a choir, and a choir that works with an orchestra. I have always heard that kind of stuff in my head, and it has always been a really exciting thought to think that could actually help in that way to write pieces and parts for people and hear it all come together. I also thought about being a midwife and starting a group called Singing Doulas that sing through the birth, if the mom wants it. There’s a lot of ancient birthing songs that have been forgotten that have are really powerful and keep the process very sacred, which sometimes isn’t easy to do when you get thrown in a hospital…to keep it almost tantric and help women get into a trance so it can be a healing experience; I would love to facilitate that.
What is your advice for the young musicians out there?
Dan: My advice would be to not really care about what popular culture thinks is cool and to follow your own heart. I remember being embarrassed when I was younger to be seen with a guitar for some reason because I didn’t think it was cool. But, follow your heart really, which is a lifelong process.
Bonnie: I encourage anyone with an instrument, because you can forget this as you get older, just to listen for the sounds around you, to listen for patterns, that will bring in new life to your songwriting. Birds are incredible with their constant portrayal of different melodies, and there are constantly different rhythms around you that are interweaving themselves in and out of your life that you can pick up and try to mimic on an instrument. Listening.
What is your personal mission as a musician?
Dan: I think personally as musician I’d want to give what other people have given me which inspired me to become a musician, which is like a healing, or inspiration, or goosebumps. You go to a show and you have goosebumps all over you body. It’s like this unspeakable thing that happens; it’s an invisible thing. And I just hope that those things are coming through us, and me personally, and being able to project that out.
Bonnie: To feel that space around your heart, the way that music can do that for people, I love to be a part of that, and for dancing. I think even the slightest movement is so good for healing.
