Tonight’s excellent show has me reminiscing about our first Elfin Saddle show, nearly two years ago. After seeing the duo at Pop Montreal, Graham and Dale contacted Emi and Jordan and asked them to play a double show in Vermont.
The first night they played at the now-defunct Tick Tick Studios, with the now-defunct band Fighter.
The second night they played at the church in Stannard, VT, which is my beloved, 150-people populated hometown. It’s in the Northeast Kingdom, between Hardwick and Lyndonville, basically.
image stolen from False45th
It was early December, and the church has no electricity — it’s beautiful inside, with white plaster walls and an egg-shell blue ceiling. There’s an old copper kerosene chandelier, and it’s heated by a woodstove at the back. It was wildly windy outside, and by the time we arrived around 4pm, which was causing the stove to backdraft crazily. It was so smoky inside that from the back of the church you couldn’t see the stage. When a big gust of wind would come up, you could see puffs of smoke billowing out of the stove.
Graham and I had come a few days earlier, and decorated inside with pink balloon candle lanterns, and with all kinds of wintry branches and brush. We hemmed and hawed and decided to do the show anyway, and it was well worth it! I had done my press work well and all sorts of people of all ages turned out to the show. We billed it as “original music” instead of indie rock or indie folk or something like that, because that’s more true to what it was, and often its frankly just the concept of people writing their own music is what’s exciting to me, and the Northeast Kingdom doesn’t see a lot of music, original or otherwise.
Here they are in all their woodland-fantasy glory
Acoustically, the church is very bright and loud, a powerful place for unamplified music and no real need to strain anything to be heard. It’s an austere, 19th century experience, sitting in the cold on a pew, and squinting with your eyes burning from the woodsmoke and the kerosene. Elfin Saddle is just two people with some ideas, patience, and a sensible and heartfelt connection to traditional music. Emi plays this creative and compact drum kit, with all sorts of little bells attached all around, her grandmother’s ukelele, and the musical saw. Jordan plays mostly just guitar, and they both sing and play more instruments that I’m forgetting. Their songs are original, but I think their music is traditional in the sense that it’s rhythmic, involves many acoustic and folk instruments, warbly and simple singing, is interested in storytelling and imaginative worlds, and it’s also very direct. There’s none of that taking on the coal miner’s persona, or being very folksy, just patience and care and imagination.
They have an EP available from Montreal’s new villavillanola and for sure will have something for sale tonight!
New Tee Print
