Rocket Multimedia: On my iTunes, all your albums fall into different genres. (Eleni laughs) Wishbone is folk, Miracle of Five is jazz.
Eleni Mandell: None of it makes any sense to me. If you walk into a record store, they file me under ‘Rock.’ They don’t file me under a million different places. Although, record stores don’t really exist anymore.
RM: That’s true. I feel that something like [the song] Afternoon I could totally see that being on Artificial Fire and Don’t Let It Happen could be on Miracle of Five. I feel like a song of yours is unique and even if you’re using different instruments or doing a different genre, it all comes across as one of your songs.
EM: That’s very nice, thank you.
RM: Oh no problem.
(Both laugh)
EM: Yeah, I wish there was a way I could control what they say, but, you know…
RM: I guess that wasn’t really a question, I’m sorry.
EM: It was a commiseration.
RM: When you write a song, is there a certain group of people whom you share it with? I’m a writer and I never know who to take notes from and which notes to take and how long until you say, “Okay, it’s done.”
EM: I have a few people I’ll share things with. But, when I was younger I definitely used to say, “Hey, I wrote a new song! Can I play it for you?” Now I definitely feel a bit more private about it for some reason. There are a couple of people who, if they happen to be here, I might play it for them. Then I’ll stop halfway through and be like, “You know, you get the picture.” I always have this sense that people don’t feel comfortable listening to a song that way. I don’t want to impose myself and I also don’t want to be in that position where someone says, “Hey, can I play you my latest opus?” I try to be a little on the down low about it.
RM: Lilly Allen was going on about how it’s harder for new artists to come up in music because of illegal downloading. Your` first album came out in 1998 so you’ve evolved as all the illegal downloading has gone on. What do you think about the situation?
EM: I’ve always felt that if somebody wanted my music, I was flattered - no matter how they got it. I once got a letter from somebody that said they discovered me because they stole my record from a record store. I was flattered that they were compelled to do so. In some ways, I feel like it’s a shame the way things have worked out. In a lot of ways, I feel like it’s a shame the way things have worked out in the music industry. And I was never really a part of the mainstream industry, but I always did have that dream that someday I would get a record deal and then they would make me known to the general public, and people would want to buy my music. The airwaves are just completely flooded. There are so many bands and so many people wanting to be musicians and so many people getting stuff for free. I’m not really too aware of how much free downloading goes on with my music, but I don’t really know how I feel about it. I still struggle to get my music heard and its kind of a mystery as to how things will continue. I guess if people steal it, I hope at least they come to shows.
RM: I feel like you can’t really win because if you’re saying, “Hey, you should pay for my music” then you’re not cool. And if you say, “Hey, everything’s free,” then you don’t have a career.
EM: Yeah, I don’t make most of my money from people buying my records. I never have. I’ve gotten by from licensing. But, I guess at live shows I’ve noticed over the years, a decline in people buying CDs and records. Although, vinyl shelves are filling up in small increments. So that may be where I might be losing money, when people come to shows and then don’t want to buy something. But, it’s so great when people come to shows, no matter how many people there are.
RM: Are you doing more touring for Artificial Fire coming up?
EM: I don’t think we are It’s been pretty complicated to keep my band together for the U.S. My bass player [Ryan Feves], he and his wife had twins and my drummer [Kevin Fitzgerald] of ten years was suddenly unable to get time off from work. I ended up using Nigel Harrison (wrote the hit song One Way or Another by Blondie and played bass for them) and DJ Bonebreak (drummer for the LA punk band, X) on bass and drums and they were amazing, great guys to tour with. But, I can’t really afford it to be perfectly honest. I don’t think a full band tour is in the near future.
RM: The acoustic tour.
EM: I did do a recent Southeast tour with my guitar player as a duo and that was really a lot of fun and the shows were really successful.
RM: I Believe in Spring - I love that song. Were you influenced by Cole Porter on that?
EM: I was influenced by all of the great American songwriters of that era, really more unconsciously than consciously. I grew up listening to the music of that era so its sort of ingrained in me. It’s probably the first music that I danced around the living room singing. At the time, I wasn’t specifically listening to anybody of that genre but that influence is just a constant in my brain. I can’t get away from it and I don’t think it really helps sell records.
RM: The song Cracked had one lyric that I was wondering if you could help me decipher: “You gave up God/I’ve seen the evidence in the pictures.”
EM: (laughs) One of the funny things about my songs is that the lyrics are often very literal and the person who inspired that song had been raised as a religious Christian. He was explaining to me when he gave up on believing in God, and then I had come across all these pictures of him with other women and I got really angry about it. So that’s what that is. It’s not a metaphor but I like the idea that people would listen to a song and come up with their own ideas about what something means. I’m always afraid of disappointing people by saying, “No, that conversation happened.”
RM: You did a song for the I Love You, Beth Cooper soundtrack. What was that experience like?
EM: It was great. I was invited to submit the song for that and they told me that they had had a different song in mind that they couldn’t afford to use, so that’s why they came to me. They wanted it to be a sort of bittersweet, twisted song that someone might sing at a graduation. So it should point at lyrics about moving on. I just gave it a shot and the director loved it. That lead me to record the song for the film’s final credits. It was a really different experience. Rob Cavallo [Green Day’s Dookie] produced the song.
RM: Oh yeah, wow, I’ve heard of him.
EM: Yeah, he’s a very big time producer. It was kind of fun to work with him and see the different way he approaches music from how I would do it. In the end, the director wanted something specific. It’s not really my version of the song. It’s what they wanted for the movie. I think it’s a really great song and the version that my band and I arranged originally was more Velvet Underground, but they wanted something that they thought the teenagers would like so it became something different. I always think teenagers should just like stuff that’s cool but I was never a mainstream teenager so I guess my point of view on that is very skewed.
RM: Yeah, I always like it when forty-year-old men are saying, “No, this is what teenagers like.”
EM: I know. And what they’re going by is just previous record sales. But, they’re a lot better at business than I am so I guess they don’t need to listen to me.
RM: They should, they’d be better off. Speaking of producers, on your first album, Wishbone, you worked with Jon Brion. What was that like?
EM: That was great. I learned a lot from working with Jon. He had so many incredibly foreign instruments, foreign to me at the time. Now they’ve become, “Oh yeah, I know all about that.” But at the time I’d never heard anything like it and it was a sound that I was really drawn to and that I loved. Jon can play anything. We had a lot of fun where I’d record the song on guitar with vocals and Jon would play all of this crazy stuff all over it. It was a lot of fun and it was great to work with him and with Ethan Johns who was engineering and playing drums on some things. Ethan Johns went on to be a really big producer as well, producing Kings of Leon and stuff. It was great working with them and learning from them. They kind of got swept away into their big careers and I had to finish the record with Brian Kehew, who’s also really great and whom I also made several records with. He went on to produce one of Fiona Apple’s records many years later, which is a coincidence because Jon was working on Fiona Apple’s first record when he and I were starting to go into the studio.
RM: I’m a big fan of Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn… and some of the instrument, I’m said, “That’s from ‘Wishbone!’” Some of the mad circus style, I was saying, “Oh, that was done first on ‘Wishbone.’”
EM: That’s very Jon and I kind of purposely moved away from it because it did become a very big trend in the music industry as Jon got bigger and bigger.
RM: At UC Berkeley, were the kid in the dorm who’d bring out her guitar and play for everybody?
EM: Like I always say, I don’t do campfire. I actually never lived in the dorm. When I went to college I lived in a boarding house, which was really great. Sometimes girls would come in my room and I would play to them. But I wasn’t really taking music seriously at that time, I just always had a guitar and I’d make up funny songs or try to learn peoples’ songs. But it wasn’t until I was in my senior year that I started to actually take music seriously.
RM: I read in a popgurls.com interview that you were in a writing group and writing short stories. Are you still writing short stories?
EM: I find it really, really difficult. I’ve been working on these extremely short stories, little songs that are stories for a long time and kind of honing that craft. It’s so incredibly different trying to write prose, but I do have an idea for a story. I want to learn how to write mystery/thiller/detective stuff. I don’t know when I’ll do that but I think it would be really fun.
RM: Like The Yiddish Policeman’s Union.
EM: Exactly. I always say, “This is the perfect book: it’s a Jewish/detective/heroin novel.
RM: I also read that you have a signed copy of a Charles Bukowski love poem?
EM: I do. It’s really beautiful. I didn’t meet him. My mother got that for me for a Hanukkah present because she was on jury duty with a bookseller.
RM: You said in an interview that you’re not a fan of laid-back, casual, ironic, deadpan type music. I didn’t know if there were any trends that have come out recently that you’ve kind of rolled your eyes at?
EM: I actually roll my eyes at all trends. Every now and then I jump on a bandwagon ten years too late. I think I’ve always shied away from being part of a group, a trend or a scene. I’ve always kind of felt like a spy. I feel like I have a day pass or something. It’s probably part of what’s been difficult in marketing me, for people who do that, that I’m not part of a scene or trend. What are some of the latest trends? Guys with beards?
RM: Yeah, guys with beards.
EM: Big beards like, “Hey, I’m just a farmer living here in L.A.”
(both laugh)
EM: Or the ironic mustache? I went with a friend, a guy in the music business, to see a singer/songwriter. And he said, “What did you think of him?” And I said, “I don’t really find it sexy to look up on stage and see someone who could be someone’s dad from 1979.” That’s not sexy to me. I know that’s part of the new trend, “Hey, I’m just a casual dad, wearing my tucked in shirt here.”
(both laugh)
RM: The song Don’t Let It Happen has a Bonnie Raitt vibe, I felt like. And I noticed there were some things with the vocals and melody. Does that all come to you at once or is there a layering process of, “Okay, we’re going to put this here, and…”
EM: As far as the whole recorded song with the band?
RM: Yes.
EM: I write all the songs myself in my living room, and I have my own ideas about where I want it to go a lot of the time, and sometimes I really don’t. With that record in particular, we really arranged everything as a band. So I would bring in the song. Or sometimes I wouldn’t bring in the song, I would start saying, “Can we try this at a live show?” And that was one of the songs we sort of started to figure out as we were touring a few years ago. My drummer is a collector of 45s - LPs too, but he loves old soul from the ‘60s. That was kind of the vibe we were going for. It was kind of an old soul song. Everybody brought something unique to all the songs. We’ve been playing together so long, we can really fall into a nice kind of arrangement. The only thing specific I can remember is that originally my guitar player was playing it, as he would say, kind of “country funky.” And I said, “No. I don’t want that.” And he’d say, “Why? What’s wrong with that?” I kind of cringe if anybody gets a little too bluesy. He was kind of resisting, arguing with me, and I said, “Look, you can come up with beautiful melodies, just come up with something else.” Then he came up with that beautiful melody. It was perfect.
RM: One thing that goes through your music, that I feel like more people should do, is that I feel like there’s a certain modesty to it. You’re assembling these great songs with beautiful melodies, but you’re not ever trying to say, “Oh hey, look at this, look at that.” You’re inviting people to let it wash over them. You’re not screaming for attention.
EM: Oh that’s so nice. I think that’s a really nice compliment. I do believe in subtlety and I think that’s really cool.
RM: The song I Love Planet Earth is a lot of fun. Why did you write a song like that?
EM: I wrote it because I was touring and I get really inspired touring the United States. Everybody likes touring Europe because you get treated really well, but the landscape of the United States really blows my mind. I find it incredibly beautiful. I was sort of, worrying so much about the planet and how we’re all going to survive and what we can do to make changes. And I was driving around thinking, “It’s so beautiful out here and it’s so weird.” We were in eastern Oregon leaving my bass player’s hometown of Pendleton. Normally we would cut across and angle to go back to highway 5, which goes through the Western States. It’s incredibly dull with little restaurant clusters of McDonalds and stuff. It’s a very, very boring drive. I said, “We can’t do it. We’ve got to find another route.” We ended up taking this eastern route into Utah and Idaho and Nevada and kind of going back and forth over the California border in the desert. It was just so mind-blowingly beautiful. We were on two-lane roads. We were driving through Indian reservations. There was just nothing for hours. And it was incredible. As corny as it is to write a song called “I Love Planet Earth,” there was nothing else I could say about it. That was it. No other way to put it. I highly recommend to everyone that they drive back and forth across the country a few times.
