Elwood Myre, this young local singer-songwriter, is gearing up for the release of his self-titled debut album. With stories set to the tune of folk and Americana tones the musician’s first full length is one that makes for serious contemplation.
We asked him to put together a track-by-track on how the songs came about and what influenced it. Give the record a spin and discover how it came about by reading what’s below.
‘Western Eagle’
I wrote this song a little after my post-school naivety wore off and I started to uncover the layers of ignorance and passivity a lot of people surrounding me submerged themselves in. I couldn’t really comprehend people’s willingness to accept their reality as finite and be so scared of anything that wasn’t a part of that. I’m not claiming that I’m not guilty of this myself, but every day since I’ve been trying to be better.
This was the first song we decided to track and considering it was the second time we had all been in the same room together we were surprised how well our limbs decided to move together.
‘Bodhi Tree’
‘Bodhi Tree’ came about after simultaneously reading a newspaper, a book on meditation and having a drunken dystopian rant with Hunter. At the time I was involuntarily trapped in a routine of waking up in a crowded house at an hour where noise was unacceptable, so I was confined to reading and writing. I ended up having too much time to think about things I probably shouldn’t be spending time thinking about in the first place.
‘Mrs Honey’
In the great tradition of songwriting people often have the tendency to borrow one another’s ideas. I borrowed this style of song from the likes of John Prine, but carved my own story into it. It tells a tale of a debauched love affair with an older lady named Mrs. Honey and as the song suggests, it didn’t end well. Hunter never really sang before we started playing this song and now he doesn’t seem to stop.
‘Water To The Moon’
This song was easily the most fun we had in the studio. It was Hunter’s favourite because he got to overdub banjo and it was my favourite because we bought various fruit-shaped shakers on the way to the studio that day.
The lyrical content came from a conversation I had with a good friend of mine about the connection between the moon and the tidal system. I was also really hung up on a girl and eventually found some common ground between the situations.
‘California’
I’ve never been to California and that is essentially what this song is about. I noticed that myself, and a lot of people around me seemed to be blaming troubles and personal struggle on the physical place they were in. Everyone had a place they could go and be forgotten. No one really believed it was true, but sometimes thoughts like that are far too comforting to dismiss. Everything was pretty stagnant where I was, I had no money and America seemed to be staring right at me.
‘Howling Beach’
‘Howling Beach’ was one of the songs on the record that was never really meant to happen. The studio had a little parlour guitar in high-strung Nashville tuning that everyone couldn’t help picking up. When I got my turn I started playing ‘Howling Beach’, which for whatever reason, Hunter and I had decided to put to rest months ago. The next day we tracked it and decided to keep it. The song itself is a snapshot of a fictional post-WWIII beach surrounded by hellfire.
‘Vagrant Life’
‘Vagrant Life’ is an ode to the endearing and all-loving female spirit one often encounters when travelling. You don’t get to meet this kind of person every day and when you do, you certainly know it. If you have it, bottle it.
On the morning of the second day in the studio I arrived at Hunter’s house while he was making what he call’s an omelette with duck eggs (he has ducks). After realising we had three more days in the studio and only three acoustic songs to track for the EP we had originally planned, we decided we had to at least try for a full-length album. This was the first thing we played that morning.
‘King Size’
‘King Size’ was recorded in the same vein as ‘Vagrant Life’, except it was the very last thing we played that day. We were so tired and mildly drunk that we forgot we had recorded it until we chanced upon it the day after. Our producer Michael snuck in a clunky bass part and Hunter found another use for his mandola and an old cymbal he’d been begging to play on something.
I wrote the song after a friend was telling me about their new king size bed and I instantly thought I wanted one too. After a while, I realised I still wouldn’t have anyone to share it with, and birds that kept me awake every morning would still be there.
‘You’re a Child, Babe’
This song gave me the most anxiety before we went into the studio. Namely, because it held a certain weight with me and we had only rehearsed it as a four-piece once. Hunter and I had put a lot of work into the arrangement, but you can never really anticipate the fevered spontaneity that sparks in a place like a recording studio. In short; we didn’t really know what to expect.
As the title may suggest, the song spawned from a relationship that went awry. For some reason it’s always songs like this that seem to ruin all my holidays. Sometimes I form a sort of grudge against them and don’t play them until months later.
‘Rain Song’
‘Rain Song’ explores the opaque desolation of longing and was roused on one of my darker orbits around the sun. It’s one of the most ancient human conditions and I’m not spiteful for having experienced it. Everyone’s been rained on.
This track also holds a hidden song at the end. It only happened because a case of beer was anonymously delivered to the studio and our engineer Scotty wouldn’t let us leave it off the record. We haven’t played the song since and I’m not sure we ever will.
