Elephants with Guns

It’s the night before the ‘I Just Wanna Dance’ show and it’s pretty late. I have to be at the venue early tomorrow morning to set up so I should probably be sleeping, but I can’t… so I figured I’d write about all the prep that went into this show and particularly one song that we will be playing on this show.

Last year, we played ‘Just When It Was Getting Good… I Woke Up’, a moody Indian influenced instrumental piece and ‘Agua’, a Latin rock song with Spanish lyrics. It was a diverse set which I caught everyone off guard because it was not like anything else at the show. For that reason I think it helped people remember us and we got a couple of great gigs as a direct result of that show.

With that in mind, I wanted to do something unique again for this show as well. We will be opening up with another instrumental piece called ‘Elephant March’ and a new song called ‘The Fight That Ends Bhangra Night’ which is a song that has gone through numerous changes since we started playing it and incidentally led us to some cool people along the way.

Initially ‘The Fight…’ was a quick minute bhangra-ish/metal-ish melody we would play at our shows to say goodbye with. We had a couple of these minute long songs we would play partly because we wanted to shake up our set, which could include 10 minute jam songs, and sometimes because we frankly just couldn’t come up with anything good after that minute was over.

Anyway, after a particular show a buddy got annoyed with our minute long song concept and suggested I try fleshing these songs out some more or our album would sound like a sampler cd. I figured she was right and I figured I’d try to flesh out ‘The Fight…’ song as much as I could which I had always wanted to play in some form or another for the ‘I Just Wanna Dance 2012′ show anyway, and which was right around the corner.

Since I knew I wanted the song to have a bhangra feel but hadn’t really heard a lot of bhangra up to that point I started asking my bhangra loving friends to borrow cds and send me youtube links of their favs so I could study the structure of bhangra songs. After a lot of listening, a lot of writing, a lot of erasing and writing again, and a lot of jamming with the rest of the band we all settled on a song structure that came out pretty good. I was pretty happy with the song so far but one thing was sorely lacking in our bhangra song… the dhol. We needed dhol.

To be continued…

We’ve taken some time off over the holidays (yeah, again…), but our recording sessions (and so many other things in life) are back in full swing.  That, and…next weekend is one of our favorite shows of the year, the I Just Wanna Dance show, which will be in Redondo Beach this year.  Tickets are somewhere around $10 a piece, but it all goes to charity.

There’s going to be a few guests playing with us at that particular show–we decided our short Bhangra song that we used to use as a quick exit needed some extra melodies and a few dhol players (yep!)  So come to the I Just Wanna Dance show and see it!  We don’t do this all the time!

Happy new year, everyone!

So as exciting and interesting recording can be, it can also be very tiring and mentally draining. Luckily we were able to take the past couple weeks off and just rest and reflect. I went up to Oakland to hang out with some buddies. Omar went down to Texas to celebrate his brother’s wedding. Sagar and Maya relaxed in town.

Now that we are all back and refreshed and ready to go we have a sprint to the finish line. We are trying to finish up the recording of the album by January and still have about 6 songs left to record. I am pretty excited about the next couple of tracks we have coming up though, we recorded a polka-ish track on Saturday and finished up the touches on writing a couple of rock songs on Sunday. So it was a pretty productive weekend.

The most exciting thing that happened this weekend for all of us was that we were also able to hear a fully produced version of ‘Head In the Clouds’ which was the second song we recorded. Sammy worked some voodoo on that track and I think it sounds amazing. I wish I could share it with you… but you’re just going to have to wait.

We had a great time playing for the NetIP gala (see the pictures HERE)!  The Kyoto Grand Hotel in Little Tokyo was beautiful, all the organizers and staff members were friendly, and we met a bunch of really cool people in the meantime.

Now for the title:  As you know, Elephants with Guns claims several influences…from rock to reggae to South Asian to Latin Jazz, we’ve got a bit of…almost everything.  I remember a few practices ago one of us made an offhanded comment that the only thing we didn’t have as an inspiration that we could trace was Japanese culture…maybe now we do, after our brief experience playing at the Kyoto Grand Hotel.  The outside patio on the other side of the all-glass wall for the banquet hall we played in featured a patio furniture set made entirely of what looked like white marble slabs.  The hallways beyond that were mirrored on both sides, with one end leading to a spa and the other to the huge entrance room of the hotel.  I’m not very good at explaining, so definitely take a look at the pictures above

What a weekend! Show day was basically a 24-hour day which started when Maya finally arrived at our hotel at 8am. From then on we started with the pre-show preparations like discussing speeches, wardrobe, tuning our instruments, checking of props, and putting in our final practices before we started on the long trek to the Sounds of Brazil (S.O.B.) in Manhattan.

Between the 4 of us we lugged around 3 guitars, 4 djembes, and a flute from our hotel near JFK through buses, subways, and long walks until we finally reached the venue at S.O.B.s for the sound check at 4pm. (Special thanks to all the New Yorkers who helped us navigate the way!)

And then came the waiting game, with about 7 hours of time left between sound check and the actual show, we had quite some time to ourselves. Quite a lot of time…a lot of time…time.. a… lot. One of the more boring aspects of being in a band is the long waits between sound checks and the actual show. You can’t walk off too far from the venue, party, or drink, or do much of anything in that time gap because everyone is focused on the show…and so you wait…a lot.

We were able to kill some time by walking around a little to grab some sushi and then coming back to play football with maracas, eat nachos, and explore the basements and backstage areas of the venue. It was a very historic place as concert posters of Sounds of Brazil performers from past years lined the walls featuring greats like Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, and Gil Scott Heron. Everyone felt lucky to be here.

All the effort was worth it though, the venue was great, the people we met were great, and most importantly the show itself was great. The 4 of us were able to relax a bit after the show at which point Maya and Omar had to get to the airport for their 5am flight back to Los Angeles. Sagar and I, who were staying in New York an extra day, finally made it back to the hotel at 6am. Everyone was happy.. but beat. Sunday was made for rest and that’s pretty much all we did that day.

It was quite the adventure all in all. Thanks to the organizers from SAIFF and Rukus for the invite and the people of New York for the party.

Good times…

So…we’re back in LA!  We were incredibly grateful for our recent opportunity to play for SAIFF in NYC this past weekend, but now that we are back, we are back to our heavy schedule of practicing and recording…back to that and some lovely rainy CA weather to greet us!

Driving down to practice today was less than a pleasure…in NYC, they have actual traffic hazards, like snow and ice.  Here, we have rain, and that is about as bad as it gets.  Nonetheless, though, no one knows how to drive in the rain, so it took twice as long to get there.  That coupled with the fact that I feel like I’m getting sick did not make for a pleasant journey, or practice!  It’s all good, though–we beat mapped another song (that is, we figured out tempos and transitions for recording,) jammed a bit, and called it an early day.

We just got out of our final practice before the SAIFF show and things are looking good. Everyone has got the set down and we’re all ready to go put on a great show in New York.

So, now comes the hard part… getting to New York.

The plan is that Omar, Sagar, and I (who have the day off for Veterans Day) will be leaving together from Los Angeles on Friday afternoon. Maya (who does not have the day off for Veterans Day) will be leaving later in the evening. Between the 4 of us, we will also be travelling with 4 djembes, 2 guitars, a bass, and a flute and the hopes that everyone and everything ends up in New York on time and in one piece.

They say getting there is half the adventure… we’ll see.

Follow us on twitter where we will be tweeting extensively throughout the journey and the adventure this weekend.

As you probably know already, we’re heading to NYC this coming weekend to play for the South Asian International Film Festival.  You can check out the address/times/etc. on our events page!

Today, instead of a full-fledged practice, we basically took the time to talk about the details, since this will definitely be our biggest show yet!  We talked about everything from attire to song order to specific details of what the venue would be like.

We’re looking at a pretty intense flight schedule–there’s a flight going straight from LA to NYC Friday night, and then after losing three hours, we get to assemble for an early morning meeting.  Then it’s going to be sound checks and maybe a bit of sight seeing before the show…which, by the way, has us going on at around midnight!  (That hotel might get some sleeping use after all!)

PS–we decided to go with both the bass riff and the drum solo.  You’ll have to come to the live show to see it!

This weekend was (my) shortest studio time ever!  We were recording “Rainy Season”, which doesn’t have a lot of flute in it, so I got to chill at home for a while before coming in and putting down my few seconds of music.  That’s not to say that the guys didn’t work hard, though–they had been there for a good 5 hours before it was time for me to add on a layer of sound.

(PS – check out the album version when it comes out to hear the super sweet intro Sagar added to the beginning!)

By the way, if you haven’t checked our events page, we are going to New York in just a couple of weeks!  Yay!  It will be a private event for the SAIFF (South Asian International Film Festival), which is going to be a totally AWESOME event put on by HBO (yes, HBO!)  Sooooo, wish us luck.  We’re getting together again tonight to practice our set and make it as solid as possible.

We had practice at Omar’s house last weekend.  It was great to see a lot of people again that I met at previous shows, and we got to meet a lot of new people, too!

First, they prepared for us a super delicious lunch.  Then, we played a few requests for some friends and family members.  Finally, Omar’s little nephew decided to join us on the drums…

I looked up and saw a giant djembe being pushed into the room, and sure enough, there was actually a kid behind it.  Once he got it into the room, he was good to go.  World, watch out!