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Elvis Perkins
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Article
written by Ged M
Mar 20, 2007.
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Elvis Perkins grew up in New York and Los Angeles, son of Anthony ‘Psycho’ Perkins and society photographer Berry Berenson, while his great grandmother, Elsa Schiaparelli scandalised Paris with her fashion designs. His songs began as home-made demos before being fleshed out in Burbank and Los Angeles and are now being released as the album Ash Wednesday on XL, preceded by tour-single ‘All the Night Without Love’. Elvis is mates with, and has toured with, among others, Cold War Kids, Dr Dog and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.
He’s backed by a three-piece band – Brigham Brough (bass), Wyndham Boylan-Garnett (keyboards, guitars) and Nicholas Kinsey (drummer), collectively known as Elvis Perkins in Dearland. With echoes of Leonard Cohen, Dylan and Jeff Buckley in the mix, there’s a darkness and reflection in his songs, which no doubt derives from the personal tragedies in his life - he lost his parents to disease and 11 September terrorism – but rather than let this overwhelm him, his music has a element of hope and a dreamy poetry. We spoke to Elvis in Camden in February 2007, as he coached a waitress into making her first hot toddy to soothe his sore throat.
SXP: Elvis is your real first name…
Elvis: Yeah, I didn’t ask for it.
SXP: Does that put a certain burden of expectation on you?
Elvis: Yeah, sure. All sorts of burdens of expectation have followed me my whole life! Not the least of which is being born ‘Elvis’ and trying to figure out what to do on this planet and then getting into music with this monolith of a person, Elvis Presley, looming. Mr Costello, he brought it on himself; little Declan, he asked for it.
SXP: Do you find it hard that when people first meet you, their first questions are: father, mother and great grandmother? After all, that is some family tree!
Elvis: Yeah that is some family tree! There are some others mixed in there as well. Elvis mixed with the blooming tree of the past has definitely been a challenge in trying to figure out what my voice is and who I am and how to deal with that.
SXP: When did you actually learn to play guitar?
Elvis: I think I started around 11 or 12 years old.
SXP: And was this with the former bassist with the Knack [Prescott Niles]?
Elvis: He was my first mentor, yeah! He taught everything: bass, drums, guitar. I think he even taught a little woodwind and brass, as well as carrying around a baseball bat in his car just in case there was a pick up game! But that was my first teacher.
SXP: Did he teach you classical guitar as well?
Elvis: No, that was a different guy, called Stuart Webber.
SXP: I read that you composed for classical guitar at the same time as for electric guitar. Do you still do that?
Elvis: I don’t. The classical end of things has fallen by the wayside and everything I once knew is pretty shadowy at this point.
SXP: What influenced you to take up the guitar?
Elvis: I’d tried piano and saxophone first and they didn’t really stick for whatever reason. And then a friend had taken up lessons with the infamous Prescott Niles and I was over at his house one day and he was displaying his new found skills. I just knew it was something I had to do as well.
SXP: When did the poetry come in? And do you still write separately to the music or are they all lyrics now?
Elvis: I started writing words before I knew how to put them to music so I guess you’d call that poetry. I write a good deal but a lot of it is neither poetry nor lyrics and it’s hard to say what turns words into lyrics.
SXP: There seems to be a motif in your songs about night and dreams.
Elvis: I guess there’s evidence in that direction isn’t there? It didn’t really occur to me until we started compiling songs for the album and I saw the song titles. I mean, I knew about the ‘day’ songs: there’s ‘Mayday’ and ‘Good Friday’ and ‘Ash Wednesday’ and now ‘Doomsday’. I was more conscious of writing the ‘day’ songs than the ‘night’ songs. No, I really can’t explain it.
SXP: Do you look for that sort of significance in song titles?
Elvis: [I look for] something that is singular in some way, something that evokes something for me; with ‘Ash Wednesday’, it was Ash Wednesday when I occurred to write this song. I didn’t mind there also being ‘Mayday’ and before that ‘Dark Day’; it was like “OK, whatever”. If there was any pattern in my music and I happened to be the songwriter, and I wrote songs about days, then I’m OK with that. It wasn’t like: “this is who I am. I found it!”
SXP: So you’re not a tortured artist then?
Elvis: Sure, but maybe not the stereotypical one. I mean I’m working on not being tortured. It’s probably the better way to be.
SXP: Obviously Elvis Perkins came first. How did you get to Elvis Perkins in Dearland?
Elvis: Well, the album was made before Dearland was a concept and once the album was a concept, I knew that I wanted a band and needed a band. Wyndham Garnett plays the keys and harmonium and guitar. He’s actually my god-brother. His mom is my godmother and my mom was his godmother, they were best friends. So that makes him almost my brother, but he’s not my blood, so he is by the godparent mechanism.
SXP: My godparents haven’t had children, But one of them was the Medicine Man Ewok in Star Wars!
Elvis: The Medicine Man? That’s fantastic!
SXP: He’s never short of work at Christmas...
Elvis: Never short of work? Yeah!...Then Nick, who plays the drums, he’s Wyndham’s oldest friend, and I know Nick through him, and Brigham the bass player went to school with both of them. So it’s kind of a family affair.
SXP: Do you consider yourself a solo artist or more a band member now?
Elvis: The line has greyed a bit since we’ve been in vehicles together for the last seven months, travelling round and sharing hotel rooms. I have very little time for myself now.
SXP: You don’t fit into any classic niche; you’re a singer-songwriter but you’re not strictly folk, you’re American but not Americana...How do you define it?
Elvis: Well, when people ask what the band is all about, I don’t really like ‘folk rock’; that’s been given a bad name. I’ve just switched to saying ‘folk and roll’, which I think sums up the band experience, and other than that I don’t know. I’m just trying to let it come through - whatever it is, the spirit or the energy - in a way that’s my own. I’ve never really cared to repeat what’s been said or what’s been done, though I am working with old forms like everyone is, just trying to keep fresh. In keeping with the fresh, I try not to figure out where I fit, though sometimes it worries me.
SXP: In keeping with the fresh, I thought the tour single ‘All The Night Without Love’ was quite back-to-basics: voice, acoustic guitar, spare percussion and stand up bass. It’s going back to real instruments, nothing between you and the audience.
Elvis: Yeah, that’s basically what we’re doing. I don’t know if what we do on stage strays too far from the record. We just try not to complicate the songs, hoping that they stand on their own, and that they’re solid as units of thoughts or feeling or whatever. Why bury them with a bunch of chaos?
SXP: It doesn’t sound remotely cluttered live. Everything seems there for a purpose and it still sounds earthy with it.
Elvis: Yeah, that’s very deliberate. Just what comes naturally, what sounds and feels good!
SXP: Comparisons are odious but someone in a blog mentioned Jeff Buckley, Colin Meloy and “Rufus Wainwright sans drama”.
Elvis: I’d heard that one too.
SXP: Or even early 70s Dylan. Are you offended by these comparisons?
Elvis: Offended? No – those are all good people. Accurate? I don’t know. I heard the Decemberists ambiently once at a festival I was playing at but I don’t know to this day what they sound like. I’ve heard Rufus Wainwright before, I hear that in the timbre, the voice or something. 70s Dylan? Sure, I’ll take that. Who wouldn’t?
SXP: What are the plans for releasing your stuff over here?
Elvis: It’s in the States one week yesterday, which I believe is the day before Ash Wednesday coincidentally. Hopefully by May over here.
SXP: We’re noticing that lots of blogs are picking up on you; it’s a sort of guerrilla marketing. Are you aware of that attention?
Elvis: I’m more aware than I would be if people weren’t telling me: did you see that in such and such? I have a better idea now what are the good blogs.
SXP: Are you worried about the way you might be presented, as a 70s Dylan for 2007 or whatever, rather than promoted on the quality of your songs?
Elvis: No, I’m more worried - and always have been more worried - about being pushed as “son of so and so” or “survivor of sad story” than I am about any of that. I wasn’t really aware of marketing, and all this stuff before getting into it. It’s all weird. We’re all just people and yet there is an organism that aims to present regular people as super people for other people to look up to or to get something from and I don’t know what to make of that. I hope people don’t come looking for a saviour or something. Or maybe they should if it’s going to sell the record!
Interview conducted by Ged M and James A.
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