On a Saturday afternoon, we at RockRevolt are tediously at work, bringing you interesting content, and that Saturday was no different. We were graced with the opportunity to have a lengthy afternoon chat session with the effusive vocalist of Emperors and Elephants, Jesse Andrews.
Forming in 2010, this Chicago band has been attracting attention and turning heads left and right. Their sound is infectious, drawing you in, and turning average everyday music listeners into instant fans. The moment you hear them, you feel an echo from the 90s seeping through a modern framework. They are the best of both worlds, both current and grungy; these guys are ready to become the next mainstay in your music rotation.
Read on Revolters, and enjoy the conversation had with Jesse Andrews on a late Saturday evening, as we chatted away, learning a little about the band, and a little bit about his inner workings.
Tell me about Emperors and Elephants.
That is a million dollar question. It’s a band. We all play instruments. (laughs) It started about two years ago. While in high school, I played with a band, and we were playing in this shitty little club. This big, tall, long-haired, behemoth of a man, comes up to me and says, “Hey! You have an amazing voice. You should try out for this band I’m starting up.” I was like, “Yeah, sure.” I was already in a band, but I really didn’t care. He wined and dined me with Incubus tickets! He gave me VIP tickets to Incubus, backstage passes, for free. He said to take them as a sign of good faith. I told myself that if I went, and the tickets were bogus, I was not going to try out for his band. Long story short, I meet the guys in Incubus. The show was amazing. Needless to say, I called him the next day and said, “Let’s jam!”
Jeph and Jason (the guitarist and drummer) have been playing together on and off for the last 15 years. It was never the “right time” for them. Jeph was singing, and he should NEVER sing! (laughs) They got together a few months before Jason met me, and said, “Let’s get together, give it one more shot, and just jam together. ” I don’t think they took it too seriously – It was just the two of them for a while, writing some tunes and chilling in Jeph’s basement and playing. One night they were at a show by us, and they saw this bass player, and Jason went up to them (Jason orchestrates everything – steals people from other bands, I swear to god!) and said, “Hey! I know you are in a band, but you should come try out for my band, because it’s better.” Ron was just feeling it, so that is how they got together. Then I came in and we started playing. They tried me out with “Man in the Box” and “Wicked Game”. They liked me I guess, because I’m still here. I haven’t been fire yet! (laughs)
Jesse Andrews : VocalsJason Meudt : Drums
Jeph Stiph :Guitars
Randy “The Arsonist” Cooper: Guitars
Ron “Stoppable” Vanders : Bass
That’s a great thing! What do you feel you add to the band in terms of voice and style?
I don’t think that our music is necessarily old in any way, or contemporary either. I sing like I’m in the 90s. I sing very grungy. For a while I thought that it was going to be a bad thing, because of the current fads of people screaming and craziness, and I’m over here listening to Pearl Jam and thinking how amazing they are. It works, because the music behind it is contemporary. I think we have a cool fusion of the two.
I actually thought you sounded a little “Axl Rosy”.
A little Axl Rose. A little Chris Cornell. It’s all the high notes. When I first started singing, I was singing like Pearl Jam and Nirvana, the Screaming Trees, and all these baritone scratchy rough guys. All of a sudden, I hit puberty and could sing really high. Now you get what you get on the record: Me trying to be Axl Rose.
(laughs) That’s right. Some prebuscent influence.
As long as they don’t say I act like Axl, I think I’m ok. If you can go your entire life not being compared to Axl Rose, maturity-wise, I think you have lived well.
Tell us about Devil in the Lake. For someone who has never listened to it, what would you say it sounds like, and what message is it putting out there.
I would say that it sounds a little GnR, a lil Alice in Chains, a little Seether. It’s nothing really too heavy or intense. It has its moments; its ups and downs. There are songs on there that are really intense and really powerful. I always try to tell people that it’s not a screamo record. It’s not incredibly heavy. It’s not even metal! I would say that it is grungy rock. I hate labels. When I wrote the lyrics I didn’t set out to write out a theme. I never told myself that I would have a correlating message across the songs. I really didn’t think too much about the names either. When it all settled and I realized what I was writing about, and I realized what the album name came from. The album name was a metaphor of using a lake as an obstacle between point A and point B. You are on one side, and need to get to the other, and as cheesy as it is to use the word “devil”, the devil would be the hump in the middle. If you were to try to cross a lake, at some point you would drown. To me, there was always that moment in which you start going after something, whether it be a relationship or a losing weight, there is that moment where you either give it up and back down, or you just go after it. I always felt like that moment at the middle of the lake, where you meet this choice, where you either drown or you endure it.
As far as a message, obviously there are songs that are in there that don’t go hand in hand with it, and are filler songs. For the most part it has to do with breaking away from whatever is holding you down. Songs like “Change” and “Your Will” and “Ghost” focus on being miserable in whatever situation you are in, whether it be your job, or an abusive relationship, or a drug habit. It’s about a struggle and getting that away from you. It is something that I didn’t necessarily notice that I was writing about, but I was going through something in my life where it was just coming through. I was going through a situation where I needed to no longer have any contact with my father. I needed to break that connection, and realize that he wasn’t a dad; he wasn’t the person I needed him to be, ever. That is a really tough thing. When you are born, you have this preset to love your parents, and know that they care for you and be there for you. I understand that some people lose their parents, and others don’t have parents, but for me, I had a parent who was (in theory) there, but I needed to never have contact with him again, because he is a toxic human being. It was hard because, I knew what the relationship could be, and I had to swallow the pill and accept that it would never be that.
I’m glad that you feel better.
Thank you. There are other topics too. About three years ago I lost my best friend. That really fucked me up for a while. I think there is a lot that has to do with the idea of loss. Track six, “Hit of Red”, is the one that is dedicated to him. That was probably the most important song on the record for me. That was the one I took the longest in the studio for. That was the one I wanted absolutely perfect. As a band, we made the decision to not have any “Thank you”s or dedications of any kind, but we decided (as a band) that this song was important because it was a milestone in my life.
You mentioned that when you auditioned for this band, you did “Wicked Game”, which is also on The Devil in the Lake. Why did you go with that and decide to put it on the album?
They just really loved this song and they really loved the way that the band H.I.M. did it. It was something that they had been jamming, so it was an easy piece that both they and I knew. So, we just started playing it. We got a lot of positive feedback from it, we started playing it at every single show. All of a sudden we said to ourselves, “We should put this on the record,” so, now it’s on the fucking record.
(laughs) It’s a great song. Now, your album also features a remix. It has a Celldweller kind of feel to me. What made you go in that direction?
It’s an interesting thing, because were just talking about it last night. It is something that a lot of bands do these days, and it’s kind of a ballzy move, because you usually do a remix of a song that people like, and we don’t know if people like it yet. It came from Jason and Jeph’s background. They were in a band in the early 90s, and they were into Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, and all these industrial bands. On most records that they would listen to, they would put in a remix of one of the songs. It was just something you did back then. When it came time for this record, a lot of bands had been going in that direction – bands having Djs in the background. We got this guy that we knew that was from a big local industrial band, and got him to listen to the song; he had some ideas, and we told him to just go with it! I LOVE it. I enjoy it so much. I think it sounds distinctly different.
I enjoy it quite a bit as well. There is also a ballad on the album.
Yeah. With the piano. That was spur of the moment. We had the album completely done, but one day we were in the studio, and I was just playing piano and singing. They turned to me and said, “What the fuck is that?” I was just like, “I don’t know. I was thinking about working on it.” They decided to just record it. So BOOM. There is that. I like the fact that it’s not really a song.
I was going to say: it’s not traditional. It doesn’t have a chorus.
Right. It has no chorus. It’s pretty much just a build. I enjoy that though. We started to pick it a part and tried to insert another verse, but I thought to myself, “No. Let’s just leave it like that.” I said exactly what I needed to say in there.
Tell me about the album cover. Who is that?
She is a model called Roc Ink. She is friends with Jason. He knows everyone, and was friends with her. He felt that her style fit the style of the band well, so we went with it. Jason is kind of the “Maestro” of the marketing aspect whereas Jeph is the music nerd (everything we write rolls through Jeph). When it comes to posters, marketing, flyers, artwork, and design, that is all Jason. When we finished with the album, we turned to him and said, “We trust you.” When I finally got a copy of the album, I had no idea what the inside looked like. It was a complete surprise to me.
You all went with a lyric video for “Who You Are”. What made you go in that direction vs. others?
I think that there is a “Who You Are” conceptual video on its way. That is something that we all want. Jason did that entire video. We took about 45 minutes to make the entire video. Jason edited it for several hours, but for me, I sat in front of camera, and he told me what to do. I lip synced the song about three or four times, and he was done with me. Then he brought Jeph in, and then he brought in Randy. He literally did one or two takes each, and BOOM, he came out with that. We did it that way because we knew Jason could do it so easily, and it was a good way to hype the song. I think a conceptual video is definitely on its way.
Watch the EMPERORS AND ELEPHANTS – WHO YOU ARE Lyric Video
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You have a lot of tattoos. How did you get into body art?
That is a great question. I have a lot. I’m crazy covered. It kind of happened. I’ve always been into the rock scene. When I was 16 I had a fake id, and I went to this shitty tattoo place, and got a shitty tattoo. It looked like shit. Ever since then I was addicted. I would say, “I’m just going to get one more.” Then I would get that one more. Then I would think that it looked stupid, and that I should frame it with another one. Then I would think that looked weird, and I would have something added to it, and then it snowballed from there.
Do you have a tat of a snowball?
No, but I should – or a domino, because I could call it the “domino effect”. I think a domino would make a better tattoo than a snowball.
There you go. Tell me about your most intricate piece, and what it means to you.
I would say that my favorite tattoo is on the side of my neck. It’s my little brother’s foot print (technically my older brother’s footprint). It has his name, the day he was born and the day he died. It’s pretty big on my neck. Before I was born, my mother gave birth to a baby that lived five days. He died of SIDS. Then my mother had me. I would never have been born if it wasn’t for him. It is one of those things in which you could say, “Close a door, open a window.” It was important to me: the fact that in order for me to live, he had to die. So, on her birthday, three or four years ago I got his name and his footprint. It’s pretty big on my neck; it’s pretty gnarly!
What is your next piece going to be?
My next tattoo is going to be to finish my chest. There is an outline on my chest. I had a bad tattoo, for someone. I got it covered up, but I got it covered by blacking it out. Now I’m covering up my cover up with another tattoo. I’m probably going to get it before I go on tour.
Very nice! Jesse, this has been one of the most interesting interviews I’ve done in a while. Thank you so much for giving me a quick moment this Saturday! I look forward to catching up with you and your new ink when you get out there on tour!
