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Tour Dates
04/23 Club Café Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
04/24 Bishop Bloomington, Indiana 04/25 Space Evanston, Illinois 04/26 Minneapolis, MN - Icehouse 04/29 Old Rock House St. Louis, Missouri 04/30 City Winery Nashville, Tennessee 05/01 Workplay Theatre Birmingham, Alabama 05/02 Eddie’s Attic Decatur, Georgia 05/05 Dallas, TX - Sons of Hermann Hall 05/06 Parish Austin, Texas 05/09 Phoenix, AZ - Musical Instrument Museum 05/11 Irenic San Diego, California 05/13 Masonic Lodge At Hollywood Forever 05/16 The Chapel San Francisco, California 05/18 Doug Fir Lounge Portland, Oregon 05/19 Triple Door Seattle, Washington Read More
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Singer/songwriter Elvis Perkins will be at the Icehouse in Minneapolis this Sunday, April 26th, in support of his third full-length album I Aubade.
Perkins was kind enough to answer these questions for W♥M:
1.What was your mindset as you were creating I Aubade? The sound is very loose-feeling and dream-like.
Perkins was kind enough to answer these questions for W♥M:
1.What was your mindset as you were creating I Aubade? The sound is very loose-feeling and dream-like.
I faced a completely empty canvas in making the record and approached it with completely open a mind. My previous recordings being markedly influenced by other minds I was inclined to produce a document which would more directly reflect my own sense of song and sound. Because I didn’t work with a producer or a band the ‘arraignments’ crept into existence in piecemeal-pellmell experimental fashion, which might in part explain the looseness and dreaminess you perceive in the thing.
2. The lyrics on your records are always intriguing and multi-faceted. (I especially love Now Or Never Loves: “Now finally the bride of the Primrose parade/ on the float Monsanto sprayed/ steps beyond the poisoned moats of her petticoats/ O loves I have led you astrayâ€) Did the words come before the music for this album or did they happen simultaneously?
Typically for me neither the words nor the music simply come first, or finish first for that matter. It’s a hobbling together towards some reasonably acceptable sense of completion and it’s often difficult to remember the exact moment of conception. For Now or Never I think its main chords and refrain sort of came about spontaneously and then it was months of figuring out how to pull it off both musically and lyrically.
3. In the years following your last official release 2009’s Doomsday EP I heard you were writing a novel. Do you have any plans to release a book still?
I don’t know which man, woman or child decided to declare on Wikipedia that I was at work on a novel. Or who planted the idea in their head if it wasn’t their own fabrication. In reality, and to the best of my knowledge, I haven’t yet begun writing a book. I consider the notion from time to time so perhaps our e-ncyclopedia contributor picked it up out of the ether.
4. Your Twitter feed suggests you are as passionate about social change and protecting the environment as you are about music. How does your activism inform your songwriting?
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I feel it’s the duty of each one of us to keep the others from falling asleep at the wheel.
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It’s clear from the shape of things on planet Earth that the human being needs reminding of its delicate position in space, the limits of its resources, the honor and privilege that is terrestrial stewardship etc. I feel it’s the duty of each one of us to keep the others from falling asleep at the wheel. In Now or Never a series of humans wake from their various states of unconsciousness and go on to try and wake others.
5. I saw that you were a guest guitar player during an impromptu jam with Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift. What were the circumstances surrounding that performance?
That was at the Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary afterparty and in the midst of it Dan Aykroyd, who is an old friend, appeared on the stage to whip up a band. He cast a broad net for players, with Sir Paul’s and my own name among those called. So I went up to aid Dan in his mission to bring live music to the moment. At the start of the set it was a 4 piece: Paul, his drummer, Abe Laboriel Jr, Dan and myself. I had no idea I’d be on any stage that night so it was quite the trip. No one came for the white Les Paul I'd found up there, and I wasn't about to walk out on the mission, so I ended up being on stage the whole time and playing with, among others, McCartney, The Blues Brothers, Swift, Grande, Cyrus, Fallon, Bolton, Costello, Debbie Harry, Bill Murray, The B-52’s and Prince.
6. Did leaving your former label XL Recordings for your own label MIR give you the freedom to really follow your muse?
When I made I Aubade I was without a label, without management and the Dearland gentlemen were making there own music, as Diamond Doves and individually (Keep your ears out for forthcoming records from KINSEY and Wyndham). While I felt total creative freedom with XL, my guess is the time that it took me to make this record wouldn’t have been possible in that scenario. Not being bound to anyone and having no one expecting anything from me certainly facilitated my wandering into the wilderness and staying as long as I saw fit.
Elvis Perkins' I Aubade LP is out now on MIR Records. See Perkins live, in person, at the Icehouse in Minneapolis this Sunday, April 26th. Duluth's Toby Thomas Churchill set to open the show; additional details at first-avenue.com.
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