El Le Faunt Celebrates CD Release at Turf Club

El Le Faunt celebrated the release of his second album, Damned, at the Turf Club this past Sunday night, alongside his Traveling Circus.

 

These guys perform live constantly, but their live show never gets stale - and they never seem to enjoy it any less.  Given a set list full of murder, tragedy, and creepy carnival music, these guys just can't stop smiling.  

 

They also have an incredible group of loyal fans - every time I see them live, the dance floor is full of people singing at the top of their lungs and dancing.  Many come in costume - and you'll even find several Thomas Maddux-style moustaches in the crowd.

 

The CD itself is great - perfect for these last, moody days of winter when you feel as though spring will never come.  The band will release a third album - this time recorded with the entire band - and I am already looking forward to the show.

 

Below, find the second half of my interview with all seven members of El Le Faunt and His Traveling Circus.

 

 

Thomas: Damned?

 

 

Thomas:  It’s the idea that you’re damned if you murder someone.

 

Jonah:  Most people would probably say that.

 

Thomas:  It’s also fun to say, “I’m releasing my DamnedEP.”

 

 

Jonah:  We all know Thomas’.

 

Thomas:  My favorite song is probably “Poor Sonja.”

 

Jonah:  Oh really?  I thought you were going to say “My Russian Love.”

 

Thomas:  “My Russian Love” is my favorite song because I like the story behind that one.
 

 

Thomas:  “My Russian Love” is about a high-class, hoity-toity ballerina who falls in love with a low-class man – it’s basically Flashdance.  Wait, not Flashdance– what am I thinking of?  Dirty Dancing!  It’s the plot of Dirty Dancingvia Russian ballet / dishwasher.  Beautiful woman, a ballet dancer, falls in love with a low-class man and they’re murdered for it, but then they rise up as ghosts to dance their last dance together.

 

TR:  That’s what it’s about?

 

Thomas:  You didn’t know that?  Read the words, dude.

 

 

Thomas:  I just kind of made it up.  I like that theme.  It occurs in movies all the time – Titanicis the same kind of premise.

 

Jonah:  Lady and the Tramp.

 

Thomas:  It’s a reoccurring theme is a lot of folk legends and fairy tales of Europe and it came over to America and we’ve always use it.  It’s my favorite song that I’ve written, lyrically.  “Poor Sonja” is my favorite to play live because that song shows off every part of what El Le Faunt is.  Turkey’s singing, I’m singing, the whole band is playing parts, the empty space that is awkward and could be filled but we don’t choose to fill it, so it leaves the listener hanging on a different note than he’s used to – overall, it’s just my favorite song to perform live.  I love opening up with that one.

 

 

TR: “Jean Paul the Geek.”  It’s so rocking – I love it.

 

Jonah:  I think that’s mine too.  I love playing the saw.

 

Thomas:  We need more saw.  And it’s our fastest song.  Well, “Hang Me” is more beats per minute.

 

Tyler:  “Into the Night” is kind of fast.

 

TR:  I love playing all our faster songs.

 

Tyler:  Yeah, I like “Into the Night” and “Unmarked Grave.”  I love when we’re hitting out stride towards the end.  And now I don’t have to worry about my chops, I can just blow it up.

 

TR:  Lately I love playing “Unmarked Grave” because we call kind of jam out at the end.

 

Thomas:  Yeah, I really like that too.  What’s your favorite song, Cody?

 

Cody:  A lot of them, but really – any of the slower waltzes, like “My Russian Love” or “The Fosser.”  I will look at Al, or if he isn’t paying attention I’ll whack him with my drumstick…

 

Aleko:  And we get to do our choreography.

 

Cody: And we get to do duh, duh, duh – duh, duh, duh…

 

Thomas:  As Cody waltzes, by the way, for the sake of the recording.  I try to write as much as I can in 3 / 4.

 

Turkeyes:  I guess my favorite song, not to be egotistical, would probably be “The Murder” just because the one line that I do get to sing on that song, I get to sing out as much as I can.

 

Thomas:  She gets to operatically belt out the notes.

 

Turkeyes:  But other than that, it’d probably be “The Fosser.”

 

Aleko: I like playing “The Crows.”  It’s been my favorite since the very beginning.

 

Jonah:  That’s my least favorite one, because it hurts my arms so much.

 

Aleko:  I like it because of the eerie mood that it creates.  I’m a big fan of eerie music and creepy movies and sh*t like that, so if it can strike a mood where you’re not sure if you like it, you’re not sure if something bad is going to happen, it gets a little Twilight Zone – it always pleases me to play that one.

 

TR:  I just love the line from that song – “The crows, they come in murders, not droves.”

 

Aleko:  And it’s weird, because as that song has progressed over time, Thomas’ vocal delivery has changed a little bit, so now we’ll all sing that part together.  That’s really fun to do.  There’s just a lot of tension in that song and I really enjoy tension on a stage because it creates a conflict and people are always attracted to conflict.  They watch very closely to find out what the hell is this.  That’s why I like playing that one.

 

TR:  Who was the band that did the cover of that?

 

Thomas:  That was the Dusty Porter Sisters.  They did a bluegrass cover of “The Crows.”

 

Aleko:  It’s a testament to how good that song is, that someone covered it.

 

Thomas:  Jonah, what’s your favorite song?

 

Jonah:  Either “Jean Paul” or “Crocodile-Skin Man.”

 

Thomas:  Because you play the saw in both those.

 

Jonah:  Yeah, but at the same time – “Crocodile-Skin Man” just has that - it’s such a simple song, but you’re just stomping along with it.

 

Thomas:  I do stomp along.

 

Cody:  Didn’t you break your boot stomping to that song?

 

Thomas: I did!  At Echo Arts, I ended up ripping of the heel of one of my boots stomping to that song.

 

Aleko:  Was that the impromptu show?

 

Thomas:  Yeah, that was the impromptu show – it was pouring down rain and we ended up calling all the band members to see who we could get out to this impromptu show.

 

Jonah:  No, we were all just there.

 

Thomas:  Right!  We were all just there.

 

TR:  It was originally supposed to be just Thomas and then we all went there to hang out and look at art.  We realized that we were all there and there were enough instruments.

 

Jonah:  You [to TR] played a nylon-stringed guitar instead of your bass.  We suspended a bass drum on two chairs.

 

Aleko:  I performed that night at Echo Arts by myself.

 

Jonah:  And then my friend who lived next door had this really, really bad accordion.  Oh, my arm hurt so badly at the end of that night.

 

Aleko:  It was a good thing that I brought that 8-channel mixer with, so we could all actually perform, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to.  It turned out good.  I taped some of it.

 

Thomas:  I would love to say at this point in the interview how much I love how Tyler joined the band, because not many people know that, but we actually were performing without Tyler for about two and a half months.  He came into my work and I told him to come to my show.  He left, came back two hours later and bought another thing – I told him to come to my show and he was like, “Eh.”  He ended up coming to the show and afterward was like, “I need to be in your band.”

 

Tyler:  What I think I said was, “This is great, but I think it needs horns.”  And you said, “All right.”

 

 

Thomas:  I think it’s just learning to material.  We’re always playing shows and getting seven people to get into one room at the same time every week has definitely been difficult.

 

Jonah:  And it had been a problem – this basement, imagine how cold it gets in the coldest parts of the winter.  Everyone was freezing except for me, because I’m used to it down here.

 

Thomas:  We have eight songs on the first album recorded, we have eight songs on this album recorded, and we definitely have ten songs that are already written for the new album.  It’s just trying to get all of them down and make sure that all of them are polished before the shows.  It’s been our only challenge – make sure we learn the material in time for the shows.

 

 

Aleko:  The best live show I’ve ever seen in my life was by a band named Bis from Scotland.  I saw them at the 7th Street Entry in 1999, hands down the best show I ever saw.

 

Thomas:  I would have to say mine is seeing the Unicorns at the Triple Rock – probably the best accidental show I saw.  I didn’t actually know I was going to see the Unicorns that night.  They had the most amazing stage show I have ever seen.  They were very adamant, there was puppetry, there were instruments being thrown on stage in the middle of songs, people were catching them and started playing right as they caught them.  They were a three-piece band playing to eight audience members and it felt like they were on the biggest stage, in front of 4,000 people.

 

TR:  That’s a tough question.

 

 

TR:  The best smaller band that I ever saw was International Espionage.  They were so much fun.  They dress up like spies and run on stage – there’s red lights and fog and all of their equipment is color-coordinated.  They’re just head-to-toe in black ninja spy gear.  They play “spy rock.”  All of their stuff is all about spies and espionage.  The best larger, mainstream band that I’ve seen was probably Death Clock.

 

Aleko:  That doesn’t sound very mainstream to me.

 

TR:  Death Clock?  You don’t know them?  They’re pretty mainstream.

 

Cody: Metalocalypse.

 

Aleko:  Oh, that’s the band from Metalocalypse?

 

TR:  Yeah.  That or Duran Duran.  They were awesome.

 

Cody:  Does anybody remember The Darkness?  I saw them at Roy Wilkins  - it may not have been the best show, but it was awesome.  Dustin Hawkins, I think he switched costumes four times.  He was wearing different colored zebra-striped catsuits.  You could see his entire chest.  During one really long guitar solo, he was riding his security guard – he was on his shoulders and went out through the crowd.  I thought that was so cool.  Obviously, you’re on stage, you’re the focal point and then you bring it out to everyone.

 

Aleko:  They had him on one of those Egyptian-prince things.  It was four security guards and he was sitting in the middle and they carried him around for the whole solo, which was very cheeky and very cute.

 

Cody:  Which is, pretty much, The Darkness.

 

Jonah:  I had to check my memory board – the best two bigger names were Barenaked Ladies and the Dave Brubeck Quartet.  The man was probably 85 years old – I saw him in Madison – he could barely get on to the stage, but then he sat at the piano and blew away anyone you could imagine.  The best local was the Goondas CD release.

 

Thomas:  The Goondas are amazing.  We got to play the Live at Studio 5 the week after and my favorite thing was when Jonah found out, he said, “I’m surprised this building is still standing.”  That’s one of my favorite things Jonah has ever said.

 

Turkeyes:  I think my favorite live would have to be Paleo.  There are a lot of house shows in Minneapolis and one of them was at Two Pines.  His recordings are a lot different than his live stuff.  They have a lot of electronic stuff mixed in to make it more pop-y, but when it’s just him and a guitar, it’s so intimate.  You could be sitting on the floor a foot away from him – it’s just amazing.

 

Tyler:  Last summer I saw Caribou and that was an amazing show.  Just really intense energy – everyone was into it.  I saw Jeremy Pelt too – that guy is an insane trumpet player.

 

 

Thomas:  Come to the shows!

 

 

Thomas:  There’s two ways you can do this.  You can buy it at our shows for $10.  Or you can download it any time you want for $8 on bandcamp.com.

 

TR:  Or you could probably go to Music-Go-Round.

 

Thomas:  Or you could come to Music-Go-Round and talk to me on my lunch break and I’ll slip you a CD.

 

 

Cody:  I hate Thomas Maddux.

 

 

Everyone in the room (almost):  Ninjas.

 

Tyler: Pirates.

 

Thomas:  Pirates are dumb.  I hate pirates.  A pirate is essentially a homeless man on a boat.

 

Jonah:  Robots.

 

Cody:  I’m going to go with bird flu.