05.16.24 - Elmore's World: First Impressions of the "Hateful Days" EP
An early peek inside the picturesque soundscapes and thematic terrains of DMV musician Sam Elmore's debut EP.
When I get out of here, this is going to make for a funny story.
This thought occurs to me as I lay shivering and sniffling inside two layers of nylon sleeping bags, which are themselves enveloped by a spacious camping tent pitched on a grassy knoll in a little-traveled corner of Eastern Maryland. The thin polyester walls of the tent are doing little to insulate me from both the late spring cold front and the incessant barrage of electronic dance music whose pulsations occur with such metronomic regularity that I am now fully convinced they have been here from the capital “B” Beginning, since the time when the spheres were first set into motion by the carefree gesture of some omnipotent hand—not unlike a pickup game of Hacky Sack. Like the ceaseless march of Time itself, so, too, shall these reverberant tuplets continue to “untse-untse-untse” their way through the cosmos for all eternity.
“…I am now fully convinced they have been here from the capital “B” Beginning, since the time when the spheres were first set into motion by the carefree gesture of some omnipotent hand—not unlike a pickup game of Hacky Sack.”
I check my phone screen. It is 4:05 in the morning.
It’s been a long day of driving, of packing and unpacking and repacking cars, of lugging amps and instruments and cable bags and mic stands up and down steep embankments. A long day of singing and grooving, of saying hello to friends old and new, of sampling creatively spiced mushroom-based coffee alternatives, of solitary walks through brambly woods, of communal djembe playing, etc., etc. An all-around solid gig day. One which I had been looking forward to capping off with some well-earned Z’s, letting Mother Nature’s symphony of katydids and nightbird calls gently ease me into a state of somnolent bliss.
As evidenced by my current predicament, such was not the case.
In an attempt to detach myself from my earthly body and escape the trappings of my (albeit mild and graciously temporary) mortal suffering, I ruminate on the purpose of this genre of music which is, admittedly, difficult for me to square with my personal definition of what “music” is. And no, that is not meant to be taken as a dig at electronic music in a general sense, nor is it a condemnation of the people who make/enjoy it, nor do I want to start a debate on “what gets to be called music,” a question so pointlessly broad and unproductive that it warrants even less consideration than the time it took me to think up those six words.
What I can say after being subjected to 10 hours (and counting) of these pulse-quickening, limb-loosening, bone-gelatinizing EDM tracks is that there is one thing they consistently lack: a story. Some do succeed at creating a certain ambiance, but it’s an ambiance entirely divorced from narrative. It’s like stepping onto a soundstage where multiple films are being shot at the same time. There’s no shortage of stimulation, of curious objects to goggle at. But with no thematic threads to bind them all together, you could hardly call it a coherent composition. Out here in the pastoral hills of Darlington, Maryland, these electronic sounds are about as non-diegetic as it gets.
Maybe my music taste is just hopelessly parochial. Yet as I burrow deeper into my makeshift bed, my thoughts begin to spiral down this sonic rabbit hole I unintentionally stumbled upon. My head fills with new questions:
What role does narrative play in the process of transforming sounds into music?
If stories are made of fragments and figments, how is it possible to achieve authenticity through what is essentially a falsehood (or at minimum, an embellishment of one’s material reality)?
How does the modern singer-songwriter figure into the storytelling tradition of America, of the human race itself?…
…Don’t these DJs ever pause the set for a bathroom break?
Come to think of it, a story might take my mind off of the present situation. There’s one in particular that comes to mind. It takes place on a chilly March evening in the heart of Silver Spring, Maryland, where we encounter our protagonist: a white-haired wizard, of sorts, endowed with vast stores of mirth and delight (read: an endless supply of Lord of the Rings memes) and whose songs, carried like a phial of splintered starlight around the neck, serve as “a light to [us] in dark places, when all other lights go out.”1
(Damn, I thought I had a pair of earplugs in one of these pockets.)
Our tale begins underneath the Popeyes on the corner of Bonifant Street and Georgia Avenue.
To be more specific, it begins in a bar located underneath the Popeyes on the corner of Bonifant and Georgia Ave, a hole-in-the-wall joint called Quarry House Tavern. Take a quick tumble down a nondescript flight of concrete steps and you’ll find yourself ensconced in a cozy little hideaway with all the classic trappings of your local dive bar/music venue: wood-paneled walls, comically low ceilings, a respectable selection of beers and fried victuals served into the wee hours of the morn, and two graffiti-plastered single-stall bathrooms located inconveniently behind the area where bands set up to play. Part of the entertainment is watching unwitting bar patrons have to awkwardly sashay around amps and cymbal stands mid-set to take care of their business, all while trying very hard to avoid eye contact with the musicians as they skedaddle back to their nachos in the next room.
I snag a table facing the door and order myself a beer. When the waitress comes by, I ask her for two waters and place one of them at the table setting across from me. My black and white comp book lies open-faced on the sticky tabletop, a pen resting in the curvature of its spine. In a naive attempt to imbue what I’m doing with a more grounded sense of professionalism, I had briefly considered splurging last-minute on a field recorder to supplement my note taking. Thankfully, my wallet talked me out of that one. Looking back in retrospect at how long it’s taken me to get my shit together and write this piece, I can safely say I am not in danger of “going pro” anytime soon, and I think that’s for the best. Better to keep this operation fun, easy, natural, simple. Makes for better conversation.
I notice a flash of something bright near the entrance. A bleached blonde pompadour peeks out from the bottom of the stairwell, then moseys over to my table and greets me with a warm hello.
The dude now seated across from me is Silver Spring’s own Sam Elmore, who sports dual hats as the eponymous frontman/creative force behind his Americana-infused high-octane rock outfit, in addition to serving as a guitarist for D.C. art punk legend-in-the-making Ekko Astral. Sam and I are meeting fresh off of a slew of shows at anti-SXSW with Ekko, a feat which, while impressive in its own right, is one-upped by the band’s recent signing with indie record label Topshelf Records.
Naturally, I have to start by asking the burning question that’s been on my mind since I heard about his trip: how the hell do you fly with a guitar?
We’ve all heard the Reddit thread horror stories and spent countless hours perusing Google for advice ranging from reasonable (“detune your strings before flying,” “get to your gate early to talk to the airline staff”) to borderline neurotic (“carry on your person at all times a printed copy of Sec. 403 of the 2012 FAA Modernization and Reform Act,2 which you should also be prepared to recite inside out and backwards on command if it comes to it”).
According to Sam, geniality and punctuality go a long way. Also, don’t be afraid to ask if you can stow your instrument in the first class coat closet. Works about 50% of the time.
That answer seems pretty characteristic of the Sam I’ve gotten to know through the DMV music community. He’s someone who moves through the scene showing the utmost kindness and respect to others—always quick to lend support or a word of encouragement to newcomers, will pitch in to help you with load out without being asked to. Yet beyond being simply good-natured, there appears to be a streak of righteous rebellion in Sam Elmore which lends a unique vitality to his artistic endeavors and differentiates him from his genre contemporaries.
“…there appears to be a streak of righteous rebellion in Sam Elmore which lends a unique vitality to his artistic endeavors and differentiates him from his genre contemporaries.”
Genre itself can be a tricky thing to discuss in a city like D.C. where so many musical influences can converge in a single band (or even a single artist). That was how this meeting with Sam came about in the first place. It was by way of an innocuous Instagram story (Thanks Be to the Mighty Zuck, our Purportedly Benevolent Internet Overlord) that we discovered our mutual appreciation for Springsteen and his narratively driven songwriting. We both agreed The River was where he really hit his stride. Particularly on this album, Springsteen excels at taking themes as grand and sweeping as the (scare quotes intended) “American Dream” and distilling them into grounded narratives suffused with the mundane paraphernalia of blue-collar life. His ability to bestow dignity on the lives of working class people simply by acknowledging their daily troubles and experiences was a shared point of admiration for Sam and me. While it’s clear The Boss doesn’t speak on behalf of the experiences of all working-class Americans, his work does speak to an American experience; one which he relays with honesty and humility in songs that exude raw sincerity.
I can hear this same songwriting ethos in action when listening to the tracks from Sam’s upcoming release, Hateful Days, which I was granted early access to before the tracks were fully mixed and mastered by Liam Hughes, one of Sam’s Ekko Astral compatriots. Masquerading as a journalist does have its perks!
The release is an intimate acoustic EP comprised of four original tracks, each deeply infused with narrative richness and a socio-political acuity that lends sharpness without veering into the territory of pure cynicism. The cherry on top is a Tom Waits cover which fits in seamlessly with its plodding rhythm guitar and conciliatory refrain inviting the world-weary to “come on up to the house.”
The plaintively plucked melodies of the tracks Bone Tired and Company Town provide a spare backbone for Sam’s resonant vocals as they recount the observations of this EP’s unnamed narrator with humble matter-of-factness. “Narrator” seems the appropriate word to use here, as many of the songs dig into the specificities of a particular character’s life and experiences in order to communicate a more generalizable sentiment.
Take the EP’s title track, Hateful Days, which spins the yarn of a character whose troubles seem to accumulate relentlessly as the years wear on: a father who walks out on the family; a mother who, despite her best efforts to keep the household afloat, loses her job in the recession; a wife who falls ill to cancer, not to mention the couple’s looming estrangement from the compounding emotional and financial strain of their situation. Each verse is capped with the refrain, “How can my soul survive these hateful days?” Yet just when it seems he has reached his lowest point, the protagonist/narrator catches a glimpse of a family living in the street—the very same family who he brushed past at the beginning of the song, telling them he had nothing to give. With this full-circle narrative arc, we are invited to consider the relativity of our own suffering when juxtaposed to that of a complete stranger. The point is not to compare our pain with that of others to see who places gold in the Pity Olympics. Rather, it is to be reminded that our own trials in life are occurring parallel to those of our family members, our neighbors, the stranger on the street corner. It’s to allow our naturally arising feelings of empathy to lift us out of our individual silos of suffering so as to see the state of the world from a wider perspective—which is perhaps the first step towards changing things.
“The point is not to compare our pain with that of others to see who places gold in the Pity Olympics… It’s to allow our naturally arising feelings of empathy to lift us out of our individual silos of suffering so as to see the state of the world from a wider perspective—which is perhaps the first step towards changing things.”
Rounding out the track list on the EP is Winning Horse, my personal favorite of the bunch. It’s a song I already had some familiarity with, as my own band was invited to join the bill for the Winning Horse single release show held almost half a year ago at, you guessed it… Quarry House Tavern. The EP version is stripped down to just Sam’s vocals and acoustic guitar. It feels more subdued, more confessional here than when played with the full band. The lyrics echo that classic motif of heartland rock—take a leap of faith, run away with me before we get too old and tired to leave all this behind us—but he makes this appeal without any grandstanding. The narrator knows they will inevitably fall short and disappoint, as we all do, but they refuse to let their human fallibility preclude their dreams for a better future. This sentiment of resilience, communicated through Sam’s sonorous voice and sentimental guitar picking, secures the EP’s place in my own personal library of quintessential new Americana.
I was also privy to an initial mix of the song Sinking Ships, a track which though slated for a later release is infused with much of the same thematic and sonic qualities of the Hateful Days EP. It’s a rousing shanty recounting the tale of a community who, due to a rainstorm of near biblical proportions, is forced to slap together a ship which they board to flee for safer shores. The boat, unfortunately, is lost, but somehow its story is salvaged from the wreckage (we can assume at least one of the passengers pulled a “Jack and Rose” and was able to snag themself a driftwood floaty with a hunky and self-sacrificing young paramour to hold it steady). This ending raises interesting questions about the process of writing history, namely by asking who gets to tell the story (the answer oftentimes simply being, the survivors…at least, those survivors who are granted a legitimate platform upon which to make their voices heard).
I could wax on about the writing on these tracks, just as I could’ve continued my exchange with Sam on countless other topics during our Quarry House meet-up. I didn’t even get to touch on some of the more fascinating conversational tangents from that night: reviewing Sam’s emo hair phases; the surprisingly poignant applications of Clown Theory in live musical performances; J.R.R. Tolkien’s distinction between myth and allegory; and the morally edifying qualities of Studio Ghibli films, to name a few. Those will have to remain stories for another time.
Back in the present, I wake up to the surprising realization that I did, in fact, fall asleep at some point during the night.
I prop myself on my elbows, my ears already pricked for the onslaught of syncopated synthetic drum beats that surely lie in wait for them… but as my senses return with wakefulness, I become aware of the overwhelming absence of sound.
That’s not entirely true. Through the gossamer tent flaps, I can hear the melodies of busybody morning birds who flit lithely from tree branch to tree branch. I can hear the faint rustling of warm bodies turning over in neighboring sleeping bags, the muted clip-clop of sandals traipsing over pavement, the purr of a golf cart motor Dopplering past our encampment.
I can hear echoes of the laughter from last night’s bonfire, and a faint ringing in my ears from singing a little too close to the stage monitors yesterday. When I close my eyes, I can perceive the rhythmic pulse of my own heartbeat which was drowned out for much of the previous night. Gratefully, I can once again hear my own thoughts.
It sounds like the beginning of a story. Or maybe even a song.
“Bone Tired,” the first single slated for release from Sam’s upcoming EP, will be available on June 5th.
The Hateful Days EP will be released on July 3rd and celebrated with a show at The Pocket on July 6th. Keep an eye out for the lineup announcement, which will include some local favorites playing stripped-down acoustic sets.
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien (Harper Collins 1991) pp.365-367.
H.R.658 - 112th Congress (2011-2012): FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012. (2012, February 14). https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/658/text