It was Iggy Pop who changed everything.
When Long Branch's Tara Elliott first began making her way in the local music scene years back, it was as a blues-based singer/songwriter. Then, the influence of the iconic Stooges frontman took hold.
"I was originally writing blues-influenced music, and then I became very influenced by Iggy Pop, and then I saw the fusion of blues and punk, it just felt so right to me and it was a totally new direction from what I was used to, because I had been doing blues for years," Elliott explained during a recent interview with Metromix Jersey Shore.
These days, Elliott can be found wowing audiences as part of the power trio
Tara Elliott and The Red Velvets, a down-and-dirty combo whose raw sound and red-hot energy recall the days when trash rockers like the New York Dolls and their musical offspring prowled the streets of New York City.
Asbury Park crowds will be able to experience
Tara Elliott and The Red Velvets first-hand this weekend when they take the stage at
Georgie's Bar on Fifth Avenue on Friday (Aug. 14).
Speaking over drinks while hanging back in the
Watermark lounge on the Asbury Park boardwalk, Elliott explained her segue into hard-edged rock. "I know that blues is a very real music and it'll always be a part of what I do, but it just ended up becoming more of a style and I don't want to get lost in that; it became stale," she said.
"I think that blues is still absolutely amazing, as I said before I'll always have it in my life, but I needed something different, I needed like a rebirth and I think that I just had to open up my doors to new musicians, at least to me. Like Iggy Pop, for instance; I grew up on a diet of like the Beatles and early-60s music, so he wasn't really introduced to me until later on, which I think is really funny, and it was just a whole makeover.
"I needed something real, I needed to really sing about more real things than what was going on. Before it felt like I was just writing poetry, and that's fabulous and great, but I wanted to write about things that would help me survive and get through my day."
Holding down the beat for
Tara Elliott and The Red Velvets is Werner Wilding, a university-educated musician and Austrian native whose path to rock ‘n' roll clubs included spending two and a half years playing for passengers on cruise ships.
"I liked the fact that I played a lot and (for) lots of people and saw nice beaches," Wilding recalled. "Then, after a while it became too much and I actually ended up being in London for one and a half years, and then I traveled around a little in Europe, Spain and Switzerland and Germany, back to Austria to visit my folks, and then I was in Munich and realized I had to go back to the States. Something told me I won't find my musical life or my voice or myself actually if I stayed (in Europe), it just didn't feel right, and I ended up in New York."
After playing with various New York musicians, Wilding was connected with Elliott through the social networking site Craigslist.
"I was worried that I wouldn't find my project to stick to in New York, but on the phone I had that feeling immediately, that (Elliott)'s serious about getting something done," he said. "That's something I noticed. I wasn't really sure what vision it was going to be or how I fit in there, but I realized that she's not bullshitting, pardon my French."
The current lineup of
Tara Elliott and The Red Velvets was completed with the addition of bassist Jeff Phillips.
"We were actually rehearsing at (Phillips') studio,
Dome Studios in Kenilworth, and he just kept saying to me when he heard my previous band play, ‘I really like your music, I really like it,' and I was like, ‘Hmm, how much does he like it?'" Elliott recalled.
"The last band I was with, it didn't work out with them and I was actually auditioning Werner a couple of times and we're like, ‘We have no bass player,' so I just asked him, I said, ‘Listen, you said you love it, so just hop in,'" Elliott said. "And at first he was a little hesitant, because he's in other projects and everything, but then he knew from that first rehearsal, so did Werner, that everything just fit."
For Elliott and Wilding, one of the key components of the band's sound is the fact that its three members each come from such wildly divergent backgrounds.
"We all come from different places and we all have different lives and different obstacles that we've had in our lives, but I feel like it really comes out in the music; it's very emotional," said Elliott.
"There are areas in our musical abilities that are different because of our backgrounds, because of our influences, and in order to blend that whole thing we have to kind of listen to each other more, you know? That's how I see it," Wilding said. "If there's a band where all the band members kind of listen to the same or similar stuff all the time, they might get overly possessive of a certain view of that style of playing, but if you have to shut that out and just focus on the song itself, then you can only listen to the other people and do the best you can."
Distancing themselves from plenty of the other bands out there making the rounds these days,
Tara Elliott and The Red Velvets deliver a unique interpretation of the classic power trio sound.
"I'm playing rhythm guitar, I do not play lead. My bass player plays lead bass and we have a drummer. And at times, for very few songs but on a song when I feel like I really want to give it my complete all and I need to use my full body and I don't want to play guitar, we skip the bass completely and I put my bass player on the guitar, which actually is his first instrument. He basically plays the bass like a guitar, and we just give it that go, because we want to keep it pure," Elliott explained.
"The thing is ... it's a minimalist approach to get the point across but not have it just flooded with too many sounds and too much processing and too much bullshit to cover up the real message. I don't need a lead guitar player, I know that I don't. Everyone else can have that and that's great and that's great for their projects but for mine, I don't want that. I want the message to get out; I want it to be a minimalist approach."
And while the band has been well-received in New York City, and even earned the position of house band at Otto's Shrunken Head on East 14
th Street, in reference to the local music scene Elliott concedes that "it's a little harder to break into the area with the kind of music that we have."
Elliott, who cited
The Saint owner Scott Stamper as a supporter of her craft, said "This is not easy listening, so it's all about who you know and making friends and you have to do the things that some bands are lazy to do. You have to talk to people, you've got to get out there, you've got to make friends with other bands and get in the scene and find out what's happening."
For his part, however, Wilding is hesitant to group bands into genres or scenes and seems, much like
Tara Elliott and The Red Velvets' music itself, to operate on raw feeling and gut instinct.
"Well, we play with a lot of bands and most of the time, it's interesting. ... But, I know that our lives are so different, individually different, I never put labels on bands, even though you can sometime describe them with styles or influences," he explained. "I try not to use labels ... (because) it's their music.
"Some people have different reasons to make music, they really want to express themselves, other people just want to approach a certain audience, a certain market, a certain niche. I just go with the feeling. If I listen to music, do I like it? Do I feel good when I listen to it? And I really don't care who plays it or what you call it, it's all music to me."