Elephants with Guns

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!

This past weekend, we recorded “Just When it was Getting Good, I Woke Up”.  I can never say that title right!

And, after a near 8 hours in the studio on Saturday, we came out with a new track recorded.  The first two recorded were a bit easier–they didn’t speed up or slow down a whole lot, and so any trip-ups that happened were mainly due to user error (us!)

“I Just Woke Up” was a different story–if you’ve ever heard the song, you know the beginning has about 5 different identifiable speeds, if not more.  Now imagine trying to keep up with a click track (that does all of them perfectly, mind you,) and trying to keep track of what part of the song you’re in without being able to hear the rest of your band members…not as easy as it sounds!

Nonetheless, we’re on to other focuses soon…speaking of, it’s going to be a live show in New York.  So…should we add a drum circle, or a crazy bass solo to our next show?

Tomorrow is the 10th annual “Walk for Hope”, an event that holds special meaning for us because it was really the catalyst for starting this band in the first place.

In 2008, Kristeen, a friend of mine who was in charge of putting on the entertainment for that year’s Walk for Hope asked if I could perform a solo act. I said “no”, she put me on the bill anyway.

After some more prodding from Kristeen, her boyfriend (and my good friend) Adnan “The Mad Guru” suggested I reach out to other musician friends of ours to see if anyone was interested in performing at the event with me as a band. So I did, if someone said yes, I’d play. If not, I wouldn’t.

Two people, Omar (our current djembe player) and Andy (a former guitarist/rubob player) responded with a “yes”. So after some jam sessions that went extremely well, less than a month later we walked onto the “Walk for Hope” stage and were first introduced as “Elephants with Guns”.

(I’ll explain the name later… maybe.)

Now three years later, we return to “Walk for Hope” with a new lineup, some extremely talented new members (Maya and Sagar), new songs, and on the verge of our first album with Rukus Avenue Records.

Life is funny…

Hello, we’re a band based in Los Angeles that plays music from all over. We recently joined Rukus Avenue Records and are in the process of writing and recording material for our debut album scheduled to be released in early 2012.

On top of providing info about the band and upcoming shows, we’re going to use this site to let you know about our progress on making the album and let you in on the process.

We’ve never done this before so we don’t know whats going to happen either… stay tuned.