[ Music Index | Santa Cruz | Metroactive Home | Archives ]
To There And Back
How local singer/songwriter
Eli Salzman broke out of the local scene and lived to tell about it
By Rebecca Patt
WENDY IS FINALLY
BACK from Never-Never Land, and so is Eli Salzman. After years of playing
small gigs around town, Santa Cruz singer/songwriter Salzman finally decided
to follow his bliss this summer, laying down his new album, Baby Flame,
in the studio before taking his act on a 12-city sidewalk and coffeehouse
tour.
That meant leaving
his job as volunteer director at the Santa Cruz AIDS Project and spending
a lot of time with Wendy, the Toyota minivan he named after the Peter
Pan character.
"In terms of my
development as a singer and songwriter after about 10 years of doing it
seriously locally, this was a very powerful and right new step," says
Salzman, who is back to regale the hometown audience with a CD release
concert this Saturday at the 418 Project. "It was obviously what I was
supposed to do. I put all caution to the wind and dove in."
Encouraged by producer
and bassist Andy Zenczak in this latest endeavor, Salzman gave the new
CD a full sound. He shows his skill on several instruments including guitar,
organ and keyboard and gets a handful of local guest musicians and backup
singers involved. He will also be backed up with a full band at his CD
release concert.
How the Beatles
Taught Him to Play
For Salzman, the
path to dedicated singer/songwriter began as a young boy living at the
end of a lonesome dirt road in northern Vermont. He spent lots of time
plunking at the piano with Beatles sheet music in front of him and soaking
in the classic rock station coming out of Montreal. His groove intensified
at an all-boys boarding school in Massachusetts, where he got into crazy
antics and played in cover bands. He's been a fixture in Santa Cruz for
years now, singing and strumming his heart out in the background at places
like Mobo Sushi, the Alley Bazaar at Squid Row, and the old What is Art,
where his first album was recorded.
Salzman's songs
tend toward moody, introspective folk-rock narratives that are melodic
and lingering. Most of the lyrics of "Baby Flame" are images portraying
Salzman's inner emotional world.
"People write best
about what they know, and I know that I tend to be a very self-absorbed
person," he says with a laugh. "What a surprise, a musician who is self-absorbed."
Salzman's says the
new CD is influenced by Radiohead and his special reverence for Stevie
Wonder and Peter Gabriel. One song is in memorial to Jeff Buckley, another
of his greatest influences.
The local angle
of the album comes in at some strange places, including a song inspired
by his experience working at Santa Cruz's annual Labyrinth Haunted House,
where he once played a ghost perpetually doomed to turn huge gears.
Salzman cultivates
a certain cute-sensitive-rock-guy thing, but he says he's not in this
for sex, fame or money. He'd rather talk about music and the sense of
glee and adventure he finds in it.
"You can go into
music for the wrong reasons if you're motivated by sex or fame or any
of the classic stereotypical reasons," he says. "If you do it because
it's the only way you can feel beauty or grace in the world, or if you
start thinking that music is the source of beauty, and the only way to
feel satisfaction is with the world responding to it, then you just have
to keep going deeper into why are you doing this."
His explorations
of how any of us can struggle with the temptation to take shortcuts to
love, happiness and truth become the rich fodder for his evocative songs,
most of which are written while he's sitting alone in the sunshine atop
the upper deck of his house looking over the rooftops of West Side Santa
Cruz.
"The most profound
moments in my music are when I'm just digging into a tune and it feels
fresh," he says. "It reminds me of the times when I was in boarding school
and we would get stoned and take the boombox full of fresh batteries and
just trip out into the wilderness ... there was this feeling that you
don't know what's going to happen in the next moment or what's around
the next corner. You're just following your muse."
His national tour
2002 was a "totally flying by the seat of my pants, get-out-of-Dodge-just-to-get-out-of-Dodge
adventure" where he sometimes raised his performance significantly by
playing on stilts.
"I like to think
that I can break through the barriers between people when I'm onstage,
like I can loosen things up and make people feel comfortable," he says.
"There is something in me that is able to cut through all the nervous
bullshit and say, hey, we're here, and let's get into this and let's enjoy
this."
Got Out of Dodge:
Back from a 12-week tour, Salzman plays the 418 Project Saturday.
The Eli Salzman Band
plays Saturday, Nov. 9, 8:30pm, at the 418 Project, 418 Front St. Tickets
are $8-$10. All ages welcome. For info call 831.460.1467 or visit www.elisalzman.com.
Copyright ©
Metro Publishing Inc. Maintained by
Boulevards New Media.