Reuniting with Ela
I’ve never felt worse about being in an indie rock band when compared to post-hardcore/emo and post-hardcore/math rock as potential style descriptions
Bill Caperton has been making his way back into my life. He was one of the first people I befriended at Central High School. Right at first when I got there it was really Martin Devaney, Kevin Hunt, Tony Bell (R.I.P.), Felix from Heiruspecs and Bill Caperton. Bill Caperton to me is forever wearing a Dave Matthews Band shirt under some overalls. Caperton was already in a band. Caperton was already ruggedly attractive. Caperton was a sweetheart. I’ve never really thought about this before, but I’m probably Bill’s closest and most frequent collaborator. We’ve made a bunch of records. I love playing his music. I love the way he plays guitar. I love how he writes. And I love how he performs. He doesn’t fill up the room when he performs. He fills up your head. He can create intimacy in a room filled with people. It’s a gift and it starts with his creativity. Our main project together is with the group Ela. Ela made two records. Our first one, Stapled to Air, is pretty fucking great. It’s the strongest release I’ve even been remotely involved in. I think I pay about $75 a year to keep it up on streaming sites so help me defray some costs and listen to it now.
We made another promising record after that. Not the high water mark that number one was. It was too ambitious, and too many cooks in an over supplied kitchen. And we didn’t have the same singular focus we had on album one. But I still enjoy it.
A reunion is one thing. It’s beautiful to revisit the tunes you loved. The ones you played in the Uptown Bar. The ones you played at a Chinese restaurant in Dayton, OH to no one. The ones you played in New York City when you thought it was gonna happen for your band. “Happen” was always ephemeral, some sense of no more shitty jobs, people buy your records, a sound guy travels with you, you get your own hotel room, when your record comes out Pitchfork cares. I don’t know. Something in there. None of that happened for Ela, but the records stands up and the formula stands up. Bill writes amazing songs and Peter (drums) and I (bass) do a lot more than just trace em. We kind of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot em. Change em up. Break em down. Push ourselves to use our instruments in weird ways. FUCK I HATE THE WORD SYNERGY BUT HERE I GO. There’s a lot of synergy. There is care for what we’re doing. There is camaraderie. There is 20 plus years of shared history. There is years of sharing things we love and hate. But until you open up the notebook and start making new stuff it’s all just high school reunion stuff. But now we’re going somewhere.
Bill’s making a poetry book which is a plausible thing for Bill to do. He’s been bringing in these poems and we’ve been songing them. Finding how they breathe, finding where they break, finding out what they need. And I didn’t know if we’d play them live. Because playing live is strange and Peter has limited nights to do it. Same for me. I like to see my family if I take my day off from the radio station. So not a lot of options to rock a Thursday. But the right night came along and now in a couple weeks we’ll be playing at Cloudland. I hope you’ll come. Bill’s new music deserves to be heard. It’s excellent, it’s beautiful and I’m eternally grateful to get to play on it.