Sunday, March 2 @ 8pm (Doors 7pm)
CBC Studio 700 – 700 Hamilton Street
Tickets available HERE
“Where words fail … music speaks.”
Elephant Revival is one of the new discoveries for many at last year’s festival. This quintet is a sound to be experienced. Their music falls into the pocket of a groove containing elements of gypsy, rock, Celtic, alt-country and folk.
Elephant Revival formed on the banks of Spring Creek in Tahlequah, Oklahoma and then relocated back to Nederland, Colorado in fall of 2006. They loved one another’s sense of shared values, and the way their disparate musical influences formed a more cohesive tapestry the more they played together. That elemental tapestry extends beyond music to a worldview and social consciousness that is expressed not only through the music, but also in the group’s lyrics. All five contribute original songs, many of them about responsible stewardship of the planet and its inhabitants, while supporting many humanitarian causes. Their very name was chosen out of empathy for a pair of zoo pachyderms who, upon being separated after 16 years, died on the same day.
Elephant Revival have been slowly making strides across the national folk circuit these past few years. Their last album, These Changing Skies, released last fall was produced and mixed by Ryan Hadlock (The Lumineers, Milo Greene, & Ra Ra Riot). NPR Music (National Public Radio, US) listed Elephant Revival as one of “10 Artists You Should Have Known in 2013” and their new album made it on many Best of 2013” lists in the US.
From the atmospheric, long-bowed fiddle lines to the quiet, dreamy harmonies and occasional weeping musical saw, their music is replete with creative arrangements. The result is an aesthetic all their own, straddling all of contemporary folk music’s various, assumed boundaries.
The five souls in Elephant Revival are Sage Cook (banjo, guitar, mandolin, tenor banjo, bass and fiddle); Bridget Law (fiddle, octave fiddle); Bonnie Paine (washboard, djembe, musical saw, stompbox); Daniel Rodriguez (guitar, banjo, bass); and Dango Rose (double-bass, mandolin, banjo). All share vocals and write songs. Paine delivers additional beats via footstomps on plywood, her stockinged feet doing near jigs as her hands, encased in antique leather gloves, rub silver nickel against corrugated metal.
Sitting in the audience during their performance, one music blogger was moved to write, “Elephant Revival serenaded the crowd with arabesque melodies, harmonies and rhythms that braided and coiled into a sublime aural tapestry. Their instrumental dynamics, verse, and even the harrowing story that inspired their appellation, invoked the majesty, mystery and sorrow of Mother Earth.”
It’s a paradigm worth spreading, and that’s what Elephant Revival members intend to continue doing as they carry their music around the world, speaking one song at a time