i posted about ely falls a few weeks ago, and if you haven’t already, please download their very free and very amazing release, let your yes be yes. the entire group and i sifted through a bunch of correspondence and put together a huge and very lengthy, but informative interview.

hit the jump for the interview.

-grizzly

Roshan Bhatt, weworemasks: For the record, please state your name and duties in Ely Falls.

Beau Hindman – Guitar
Dustin Kniffen – Vocals and Guitar
Jenn Hanson – Keyboard, Flute, Tambourine, background vocals
Austin Carlson – Bass drum, snare drum, high and low Toms, cymbals and tambourine.
Franklin Colbert – Bassist

WWM: You guys are fresh off the release of your album, Let Your Yes Be Yes. How does it feel to have it out, and how was the reception for the album?

Austin: Great! I’m glad that we ultimately decided to release this album for free. We’ve obviously not concerned with making money right now and it just makes me happy to know that anyone with a computer can download our album. For people that don’t have the Internet yet, I’d be willing to send a burned copy in the mail to them if that’s what it takes for them to hear our music.

Jenn: The fact that it’s released has been surreal ever since it happened. The album was a bit of a drawn-out process; I felt like we were always adding, perfecting or tweaking something. But I’m totally pleased with it. I think we surprised a lot of people–be it a good surprise or otherwise. I’m always humbled by how much good feedback we have gotten. Not because they think we’re good–or that I’m good for being in a sweet band–but just that I had a part of somebody finding a new or different appreciation for music. It’s a powerful feeling; I’m getting pretty hooked on it!

Beau: Having the album out is like having my social life back. I spent most of my last semester mixing in my basement dungeon, which we called the Batcave. It took that long because of four to five computer crashes that would kick us into the past. Towards the end, I think I became pretty good at backing stuff up. The latest crash only kicked us back a day or two.

Luckily, the only complaint I’ve heard is that it doesn’t have enough vocals, but that’s an artistic thing. Plus, vocals sometimes hurt songs because the lyrics essentially tell you what kind of cognition is supposed to assist the feelings you already have.

The only vocal album I can think of that doesn’t steer you in a direct realm of thinking is ( ) by Sigur Rós, since it’s vocal gibberish. Granted, maybe a vague but free feeling isn’t as good as a limited but concise one. Who could decide such a thing? At any rate, even if there couldn’t be consensus on that, at least we can know that it’d be silly to intentionally limit ourselves from having both modes of feeling.

Dustin: Getting Let Your Yes Be Yes out has so far heightened my craving to get new material hammered out. I think we’re all proud of the results, but know that our best work is still ahead of us. We’re a very young band still and as a result we have our fair share of obstacles. We’re just now getting our live show to a place where we are happy with it and as much as the album means to me, I would rather someone come check us out live and see that we’re not just a studio band. As far as reception goes, it’s always a touchy issue because my personal music-listening tendencies are so subjective that I feel every music fan’s must be. You have to kind of learn to accept whatever people throw at you and channel it in to some sort of useful inner-dialogue. We have received our fair
share of compliments, but we’ve also received some criticism to match those compliments.

WWM: What is the music scene like in Iowa? It doesn’t seem like a typical breeding ground for talented up and coming musicians.

Beau: It’s interesting. I don’t know. On one hand, there are no population centers beyond Des Moines (if it could be considered one), so you play to only ten people on a really good night. On the other hand, national acts play small shows around here, so it’s a great chance to open for them and relax with them. Even if you aren’t involved in the creative side, you can just go to small shows of your favorite artists and likely chat with them at some point.

Jenn: It’s obviously smaller than, say, Cali… but I don’t feel like I’m being cheated by living here. I love the state, and I obviously met some sweet dudes with whom I have a great deal of musical chemistry. Sure, the scene’s size is a bit of an obstacle, but we’d have obstacles anywhere we live.

Dustin: I think you’re right for the most part, but there are some great bands in the state. At this particular moment in time, The Envy Corps seems to be the standard that the scene is trying to live up to. Going off of Jenn, the hardest part for us is getting people out to the shows and spreading our name around. From my perspective, we’re a pretty non-traditional band for this scene and we’ve garnered the support we have through word of mouth. The crowds are slowly but steadily getting bigger.

WWM: Is there a particular reason why you gave the album away for free? And for the record, considering the state of the record industry, I really respect this method of releasing music, and I wish more bands would approach it this way.

Austin: Well, I think part of the reason we did it was because people appreciate it. Also, we didn’t want to take the big step of investing a bunch of money in having the thing pressed and packaged.

Franky: Everyone likes free stuff. We make music because we love to, not to make money.

Dustin: We handle every aspect of our records and promotion and we acknowledged early on that to get anywhere we would have to use the internet to our benefit. It seems pointless not to use its powers to their full ability.

Franky put it best: right now we’re making music solely to make it and let people hear it. We took a step back and asked ourselves if dropping $2,000 on pressing an album the way we wanted to was cost-effective, or even practical. The trend these days is to just download the album you want and occasionally listen to the CDs you bought before you knew you could download. Why not save a bunch of money and just have posters, buttons, and shirts at the merch table? This allows us to turn that money on furthering the band, whether it be through recording equipment, live gear, or just living.

Beau: There are a few reasons. To begin, I love downloading music, so I don’t feel like I can rightfully
expect people to pay for the music that I’m now a part of. The most important thing, though, is that we’re doing it because we love it.

Musicians, I don’t feel, are in a position to really deserve much money. For the most part, we’re just a collection of people who are taking monetary advantage of peoples’ desire to be entertained or lulled. We get to do something we love, so why should we expect money? Mere subsistence is all that a musician could really ask for, because playing instruments is a gift, through and through. If somewhere along the way, people decide that they want to donate to our cause and help keep food on our table or even give us enough for luxuries, that’s up to them, but we are blessed without them.

WWM: What are your plans for the future, both the immediate future and later future. Do you have any plans to tour outside of Iowa?

Beau: For the immediate future, we have basically become the Vaudeville Mews’s house band. We have a bunch of shows coming up there. In May, we’re hoping to tour the East Coast for a couple weeks. We are asking some friends to join us, but are waiting to hear back from them.

The later future is heavily contingent on Dustin, as he has applied to poetry grad schools across the country. We may relocate, we may break up, or we may be staying in Iowa. Who knows! We’ll likely know within a month what he’s planning on doing, and will figure out our situation from there.

Jenn: Currently we’re recording our LYYBY EP’s. I’m having a lot of fun experimenting with different genres, styles, instruments, etc … my parents just bought me a ukulele for my birthday, so I’m jazzed to see if and how that would ever fit into our songs. Because three of us are graduating, it’s a little difficult to see where exactly we will be in six months or a year, but I know we’ll all put Ely Falls as a high priority. I’m sure we’ll stick together in some form or another.

WWM: What can we expect from the next Ely Falls album? Will you continue to release music for free?

Dustin: As Jenn said, right now we’re working on continuations of Let Your Yes Be Yes. We have three EPs planned, Paramnesia, By The Silent Lake, and Alta Marea. The only efficient way to describe them is to compare them to deleted scenes from a movie that weren’t actually scrapped. The EPs have styles similar to their namesakes and they fit into the context of the album by either preceding the song or perpetuating it. We’ll be releasing each one of them individually and when they are all done we’ll be doing a “remix” of the album with all of the pieces in place
and posting the entire near-two-hour collection online.

WWM: I was looking through your list of influences on your myspace page, and I have to say, the list seems pretty dead on considering your sound. Is that what you and the band were going for?

Jenn: I think our list of influences is kind of an after-thought. We didn’t sit down and say, “OK, this song will be Mono + Appleseed Cast!” and go from there. Although I didn’t personally compose the list of influences, I’m pretty sure it was simply giving recognition to the bands that shaped or inspired our musical preferences.

Beau: I think it’s mostly the aftermath of having influences: when we get an idea, it’s likely from some subconscious arena where our favorite bands and their impacts on us reside. That’s not to say that it’s not always subconscious. Sometimes we blatantly say stuff like, “On Analemma, let’s jazz it up with a Toe-esque drumbeat to breakup the dreaminess of the intro.” Other times, we just listen to our hearts and it might come out like someone else.

As far as the post-rock influences, it’s hard to avoid. Post-rock as our influence list provides it has a single
common thread: long dynamics. So, anytime you commit those (which are my favorite kinds of dynamics), it’s hard to avoid being pretentious.

As a general answer, we don’t really go for anything. We just like to get together. If there’s anything we’re going for, it’s to make noise and possibly express philosophies that people can have access to via albums.

Austin: We do actually use our influences in terms of the types of feels and emotions we want to create with our songs and with such a diverse group of people in the band (musically speaking) we’re able to create a sound that is unique to the band.

WWM: If you were the opening band for any three bands, dead or alive, who would they be?

Beau: The Snake the Cross the Crown, mewithoutYou, and Blind Guardian. The Snake the Cross the Crown always has really humanizing shows because of their song “On the Threshold of Eternity” and its constant featuring of gang vocals/drum cadences from members of other bands. The time I saw them with mewithoutYou, though, was the pinnacle. At that show, there were dozens of people on stage throughout the night. It felt just like a celebration!

With Blind Guardian, I figure we could all get on stage, then, and sing Kursch’s millions of harmonies together. Then, the night would end really energetic with their brand of power metal.

Jenn: Beau’s answers are pretty hard to top on this one…

Dustin: It’s always changing! If it was happening tonight I’d say Sigur Rós, Yndi Halda, and The Appleseed Cast, although the first two aren’t terribly practical. I think those two fall under the category of ‘bands it would be awesome to be in’ or ‘bands I would love to watch every night.’ I don’t think an Ely Falls/Sigur Rós bill would go over that well.

Franky: Limp Bizkit, Poison, and Crazy Town.

WWM: Well, that’s pretty much it. Do you have anything you’d like to add to the readers of weworemasks?

Jenn: Thanks for reading our words! If you listen to our music, even better! And if you can appreciate music through listening to our album, that’s all I could ask for. I’m just happy to be a part in that!

Austin: Thank you, thank you, thank you to anyone who gives our music a shot!

Franky: Listen and give us your opinion! Me gusta de feedback.

Beau: Thank you for your kind attention.

Dustin: An echo of what everybody else said. Get ahold of us on MySpace and let us know what we’re doing good, bad, or the other. More importantly, just let us know you stopped by at all and say hello. We live on connecting with people.

add ely falls on myspace.

download:

let your yes be yes (full length)
let your yes be yes (acoustic)

video:

stream live performances by ely falls.

-grizzly