About Me
Honky tonk. That's it. When I spoke with Luke Elliot on the phone the other day, we both struggled to come up with ways to describe his music. Like most musicians, he can't — or won't — describe it. That makes sense. Label music and suddenly it has a category and the artist has contemporaries and influences, and who wants to be pigeonholed?But there has to be some kind of descriptor, and as Elliot says in our coversation, "You can call it whatever you like." So honky tonk it is.And like in a good, swaggering, foot-stomping honky tonk tune, Elliot's piano bounces, swings and swaggers rhythmically, with his voice carrying the bulk of the melody. The lyrics feel like short stories, not just moon-June-spoon rhymes strung together. Lap steel guitar shines and wails throughout the songs (or at least the ones I've heard), sliding up and down and accenting Elliot's vocal lines. There's also a thumping, staccato upright bass on most of the tracks from his self-titled, five-song EP.If you haven't heard of Elliot, 24, that's likely because he's only been in Greater New Haven for about six months. He moved here from New Jersey and has spent much of his time putting together a new band."I started over here," he says of the move. "A couple [musicians] here knew who I was, so I think I had some good footing to start off with. But it was difficult finding a new band. I've been through a couple guitarists and a couple drummers." He adds, "I was looking for people who really had eclectic tastes."Lately his eclectic tastes include a lot of PJ Harvey and Nick Cave in addition to his standard diet of Bob Dylan, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie and Clarence Ashley, a banjo player who first came to prominence in the 1910s playing in traveling medicine shows.Elliot's current band features the formidable talents of Jay Russell from Diamond J & The Rough on bass and Mike Paolucci from Goose Lane and Baboon Nature on drums. Ryan Masterson, a friend of Elliot's from New Jersey, rounds out the quartet on guitar. It's a good mix that should conform well to Elliot's preferred method of playing live."I try to stay as theatrical as possible, to keep the energy up," he says. "When I'm playing bars with pop bands, it helps to keep it moving."The opening song on Elliot's self-titled EP, "Get 'em While They're Hot," is a case in point. Elliot and the band stay on top of the beat, pushing the song forward for three minutes of jangly fury and twangy vocals."People love that song, so I play it a lot," he says. "A lot of times, when people come to shows for other bands, they don't know what to make of me. So I always play for people in the back of the room. And I think I'm lively enough to capture them."Next on Elliot's docket is recording a full-length album and a follow-up EP. And then a second full-length album. And he says it will all probably sound different from his current EP because, as he says, "I don't want to repeat myself."So maybe the next record won't be a honky tonk foot stomper, but more of a country or folk album. But not honky tonk. Who knows? However it ends up, the descriptions can be hashed out later.
-Dave Riedel, The New Haven Advocate
