Artist Interview: Q&A with Eli Gardiner
Eli Gardiner, 2021. Photo courtesy of the artist.
I was excited to connect with Minneapolis-based singer/songwriter Eli Gardiner recently. He’s been on my shortlist of new-to-me artists I wanted to see live since before the pandemic. But live shows are only slowly starting to happen, so instead I gave his latest album, The Fire and the Medicine, a couple spins, and we sat down to talk about the process of making the record, how he views songwriting, and more.
Carol Roth: First of all, I've seen your name around so much that I thought you'd been in Minneapolis for decades, but I did some research and realized you moved from Virginia in 2018. So you must’ve just gotten into the music scene here right away!
Eli Gardiner: Oh I did, yeah; I started going to open mics right when I moved into town. I've been writing songs for a long time but it was a slow progression getting comfortable playing shows, and then getting comfortable doing the business side of things like promoting myself, but I finally got to a good place with all that. So maybe that's why it seems like my name has been around, because I've been working at that.
CR: So the Twin Cities music scene has been pretty welcoming to you?
EG: Yeah, it's been great! The first open mic I went to was on Tuesday nights at moto-i in Minneapolis. Then people started telling me about the Songwriter Showcase in St. Paul that Nick Hensley runs. That was where my eyes were opened to the caliber of musicianship in town. The idea that it’s not really an open mic; it's more of a showcase for songwriters, that’s almost like a Nashville thing.
That was huge for me because I've always been a stubborn bastard who’s like “I'm just gonna play my own music—I don't care what you want to request.” I'll play songs I don't write if I like them, but I've always been really hard-headed about that.
That was a struggle with early band incarnations where I’d get with people who’d say, “More people will come to our shows if we're playing covers.” I'd be like “Yeah, but that's not why I do this.” I always really pushed back against that. The reason I play music is to write music.
CR: I didn't even know that was an issue, because here I feel like most artists are doing 90% their own material, unless it's specifically a cover band.
EG: A city can sustain that, but if you go outside the city it's pretty much cover music. The venues aren’t necessarily saying it has to be like that, but those are the type of artists that play at them. It's strange.
CR: Let's talk about your album, The Fire and the Medicine. Is it a continuation of a sound that you've always been doing, or is this one an evolution—or a revolution?
EG: Both, I think! This is my first full band album—before it's been pretty much me doing everything, or getting a few people involved—more stripped down. But I really wanted to build these songs up. This is the first time I’ve gotten some high-caliber musicians involved to do things that I couldn't do—musicians that I trusted with these songs. I was very focused on getting the right players for the right songs. Really looking at each song like, what’s the best way to represent this?
CR: I noticed that about the songs; they belong together, but each one does have its own sound.
EG: Yeah, I wanted to have some cohesiveness as well, but I wanted to make use of these amazing guys I met who can play some great music. I wanted to filter my songs through that and see what would happen.
CR: Did you envision them as full band songs? Were you hearing them that way when you wrote them?
EG: Yes, most of them I think I did. There were a few, like “Fictional Women,” that I knew had a good groove, but I didn't know how it would translate to having a full band. Greg Schutte, the drummer, who helped me produce this album, did a great job with that. He translated my rhythmic guitar playing into the multiple layers of washboard and drums. I think most songs can be worked up with drums. But there are some songs it would take something away from, like “Villain.”
CR: Let’s talk about “Fictional Women.” I felt like each song was a little different, but that one was a big divergence from the rest of the album. What prompted that?
EG: It's a little bit of lightness. Parts of the album, like the song “Blood Soaked Money,” are slower and talk about really rough, hard issues in the world, so I wanted a fun upbeat song to kind of break it up. “Fictional Women” is about how this idea of a perfect body or a perfect woman or a perfect man doesn't exist; it's just fictional.
CR: I like how you’re talking about artificiality in the song yet it's the most rootsy, homey track on the album. It's a very real-sounding song taking down fakeness.
Another thing that caught my attention on the album was the Townes Van Zandt reference in “Villain.” You refer to that famous documentary clip where Uncle Seymour starts to cry as Van Zandt sings “Waiting Around to Die.” I really love “Villain”; what was the inspiration for that song?
EG: I was on a plane to Detroit and listening to a podcast with Steve Earle, and he was talking about different characters back in Austin and about songwriters. And he said something about how Bob Dylan did songwriting on purpose. I was thinking about that idea of doing something “on purpose” and how that relates to songwriting. Some people talk about their songwriting like “Well, that's just what I do. I have to do it.” Especially in Americana and country, the idea of truth and being honest is really big.
So I was kind of playing with that. The narrator is deciding if he wants to be the villain. I was thinking about songwriters like Townes Van Zandt and Bob Dylan. I mean, if you look at Townes, he wasn't like a nice guy; he wasn't your buddy. He was this character. And I think Bob Dylan’s played with that his whole career. If you talk to other musicians, they don't know who he is. He's never revealed who he is. He's a shapeshifter. I saw a documentary where someone talks about first seeing him at the Newport Folk Festival, and that's exactly how they described him. He could just channel various things through himself.
That idea really got my creative juices flowing with that song. Are you deciding to do it, or is it just what you do? Do you want to be the villain or do you want to be the hero?
CR: So are you trying to be a hero or a villain?
EG: That's another thing with that song—it’s me figuring out, how do I want to be as a songwriter? And for me, I just want to let it flow through me. I don't want to overthink it. Especially with this album; I looked at these songs in terms of how do they relate to each other? How do they speak to each other? I seem to be the kind of songwriter where I just want it to be a natural thing. I don't want to always say, this is a song about this, and this is the way you gotta feel about it.
CR: Writing with purpose, but not not crafting an image like Dylan?
EG: Yeah. And I don't know if you can do what he did nowadays, with the amount of media and camera phones and stuff out there. I think it would have been different with Bob Dylan if you’d have seen him actually talking about, “I just want to fuck with him at this interview,” right?
CR: True. I think that’s maybe a relic of the past.
It did feel like there was a conscious progression on your album, where the songs started out largely about the greater world, and the ills that we're facing as a society and as a planet, and then moved into the personal. Was that deliberate or did it come out naturally?
EG: It came naturally. But later I saw that too, how it went from bigger picture down to the individual.
CR: In one interview, you mentioned that some of the inspiration or drive behind this came from personal tragedy, so it’s interesting you start the album out with this big worldview perspective.
EG: Well, the last album I did was very personal. My brother passed away from a drug overdose, and I was dealing with that. I very much did that album just for myself. It’s called Virginia Rose and it's just me and a buddy recording in his bedroom. It's something I had to do at the time. But a lot of the songs I can't even play anymore. They're just so hard to put out there; you’ve got to get into a different emotional place to do them. That was a very, very personal thing.
So with this album there's a little bit of that. The title The Fire and the Medicine is based on Native American teachings. You know the symbol on the cover? When my brother passed away, all my family members got that tattoo. It represents the four directions with four medicines. During the funeral there was a spot where we could sit around a fire and offer four medicines to the fire. That really helped us get through a rough time, so I wanted to honor that somehow.
And the fire and the medicine can also be applied to the bigger picture, to what's going on in the world right now. Like people are fighting against all kinds of things, institutions, trying to find a way, and you gotta have a little bit of fire in your belly. But then you also need humanity, which is the medicine.
CR: Was there something that stood out to you that you're especially pleased with in these recordings, like an instrument or an effect or a musical interlude that makes you really happy?
EG: Yeah, the first song, “Boat at Sea.” I was kind of on the fence about whether I wanted to include it in this album. It was either that or another song called “People of the Bear” that's yet to be recorded. But then I figured out this long outro for “Boat at Sea.” I had this idea of big, crazy drums, and I think me and Greg spent half a day working on that, layering stuff. The latest American Aquarium album has a song with this crazy outro, and I like the idea of how that sets a tone, especially if it’s the first song on the album. So I was really happy with how that came out.
CR: I like that you had that vision and saw it through. That’s kind of the opposite of this story Logan Ledger tells. His first song that came out, “Starlight,” has this really long interlude in the middle and then they go back into the first verse. It turns out that that was completely spontaneous in the studio. They weren't planning on playing it that way.
EG: I like songs like that, where it surprises you—like, okay, what is gonna happen? Some songs need to be really short, but some can just expand. I like that idea, especially for live shows, where there's opportunities within a song where you can just feel it and figure out where there can be improvisation.
CR: Yes. God. That's one of the things I miss the most about live music right now; that feeling of songs getting expanded on stage in a way that's never gonna happen again.
EG: Exactly.
Eli Gardiner, 2021. Photo courtesy of the artist.
CR: Speaking of live music, do you plan to play out with a full band more when things open up? Or are you going to be mostly doing your singer-songwriter-with-a-guitar format?
EG: I want to do both. I'm trying to get some things on the books for the summer and I'm looking for full band opportunities and solo opportunities. Meanwhile, I'm a video producer as well, and I'm going to start doing a songwriter series on video. I think I might call it “Shut Up and Listen to the Song.” It's gonna be different locations, and it'll be real stripped down, just solo performers playing.
CR: Oh, that's exciting. I'm looking forward to that. And I really like your new line of “Shut up and listen to the song” merch—I just need to decide on a hat color! I completely relate to that as an audience member, and as a writer. Sometimes I'm especially taken with something I put out there, and I hope people will connect to it. What song makes you wish the most that people would shut up, put down their drinks, and actually listen to and really take in the lyrics?
EG: When I wrote “Blood Soaked Money,” I can't remember which mass shooting had just happened, but I was trying to wrap my head around it. You know, all these politicians were out there saying “thoughts and prayers”; everyone's like “thoughts and prayers.” That doesn't do anything for anyone. Something needs to change, and it still needs to change, because it's still happening. So where can change come from? That song kind of poured out of me. It's a really graphic image, but I think it's important to listen to those lyrics, because what can change is empathy. Forget about what you want. Forget about your obsession with firearms, and think about other people. I think a lot of issues can be solved like that, ultimately: Put yourself in that person's shoes. What would you want?
CR: I’ll go back and listen to that one more closely! Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?
EG: I'm just glad I was able to do this! I love people that are so passionate about music, because I'm the same way—I’ll give my time and talk to musicians and help get the word out. I think as an independent musician, it can be frustrating at times, especially in this past year, where there's no shows to help get music out there. I've learned to be persistent and patient, but I'm looking forward to sharing this music with more people as things open up, and I think there's a lot of different ways to do that. I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to put it in a different arena—maybe some new people will listen!
Speaking of that, shut up and listen to the song “Villain” below! The Fire and the Medicine is available on Bandcamp as well as streaming platforms. Follow @eli.gardiner on Instagram to catch his weekly livestreams and other news, and check out his merch on his website
Carol Roth. Photo credit: Dan Lee.
Carol Roth is a full-time marketing copywriter and the main music journalist and social media publicist for Adventures in Americana. In addition to studying the guitar and songwriting, Carol’s additional creative side hustle is writing self-proclaimed “trashy” novels under the pseudonym @taberkeley!
