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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before… (Posted by Elan Mehler)

....Okay, so it’s summer of 2005 and I’m playing this chill hotel in Switzerland.  I mean, very chill.  Background gig, but one that lets you do your own thing. At some point I look up to see someone paying closer attention than usual at the bar.  Finish the set to an empty room.   Get more drunk.  The next day I meet this guy with a British accent who says he really enjoyed the music and that he’s “in radio.”  Six months later we put out a single, and about a year later we drop the LP.  Bit of kismet really, I had just established a band with the piano/Rhodes thing about a couple of weeks before heading to Swizerland and we were just about to go into the studio thanks to a grant from The American Composers Forum.  Showed the results to Gilles when he came through NY on tour and we were off.   That was a trip in itself, rolling up to this posh hotel in Soho (Manhattan, not London) with my demo CD, fighting past some Japanese TV crew that was waiting impatiently for an interview and heading upstairs to spend an hour listening with Gilles to these tracks I had just cut, him turning around and being like “this is just the kind of thing I’m looking to release” before saying “I don’t think anyone’s going to buy it.”  My face hurts from smiling--I haven’t heard anything outside of “album…release…”Any rate, flash forward past a quick and beautiful tour in London to the release date and a surprisingly warm and really rewarding (first ever!) critical response and picture this: first night of a tour, its  2:30 in the morning in Amsterdam, everyone’s ears are ringing from the Soil and Pimp experience and a couple hundred loud, drunk Dutch people have stumbled upstairs in a cloud of pot smoke to hear me play the sensitive solo piano section of the Brownswood Loves Jazz Tour.  I’m thinking about how nothing can seem to change and how everything can change in an instant, and I’m nervous as hell.  Turns out the Dutch love Jazz too.   Had a great time on my most recent trip playing with José James’s crew again and bringing my music to Pizza Express in London with Alexi David on Bass and the inimitable Tom Challenger on Sax.  For the future I’m looking forward to heading back to Switzerland, I’ll never get sick of that gig,  Going to get a new live recording there this Spring with my trio.  Also look out for a new studio album we’ll be recording this summer with the amazing vocalist Becca Stevens and a killing drummer, Vinnie Sperraza.  I’m busy writing music that’s going in some new directions and can’t wait to see what people think of it.   There’s no better thing as a musician than getting you’re music heard, thanks for listening.Peace,Elan

  • Posted by Thristian Richards
  • Aug 28, 03:42 AM

Mannn, GET A ROOM! Had to leave the Jose James party tonight before I heard a single note. Overcrowded, overpriced, gettin bumped & slammed around by other people also trying to find a spot to stand and wait…and wait…the address may have seemed terminally “hipppp” by Euro standards, but was stoopidly small & unbearable for an NYC debut. The band was obviously suffering as well. This artist & music deserves a venue better suited to it’s stated hype. Hope the show went well.

Posted by Tim
Feb 1, 09:43 AM

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