Jesse Sheppard - Elkhorn Interview
Drew Gardner and Jesse Sheppard, the two-guitar duo of Elkhorn, share a musical brotherhood that spans several decades. From their nascent high school socialist-realist post punk band, Mayfirst, to teenage scavenger trips to the Princeton Record Exchange and City Gardens, the two came of age goofing along to the Dead Kennedys, the Butthole Surfers, and Sonic Youth in the dank Jersey/Philly-scene music holes. After college in the nineties Drew moved off to San Francisco and got deep into the free jazz/energy music scene as a drummer, where he collaborated with John Tchicai among many other heavy hitters. Post-college Jesse was transfixed by the modal excursions of ‘70s electric Miles Davis and the exploratory prognostications of King Crimson and Jimi Hendrix. When Drew moved back east in the late ’90s, the two were again in the same place at the same time, and it was only natural to play music together. A few years later Jesse decamped to the Philadelphia suburbs to raise a family and pursue filmmaking, and in the process discovered both American Primitive music—Jack Rose was living in Philly at the time and performing regularly—and his instrument—twelve-string acoustic guitar. Around the same time, Drew picked up the Fender Telecaster again, with an ear toward the extended electric solos of classic rock and a foundation of improvisational practice at his back.
The inherent duality of the band—acoustic/electric, traditional/modern, 12-string/6-string, fingerpicking/plectrum, ostinato/lead—coalesced to create the unified Elkhorn sound. They played their first show in 2013, and put out three official releases over the coming years: Elkhorn (Beyond Beyond is Beyond, 2016), The Black River (Debacle, 2017), and Lionfish (Eiderdown, 2018). East and West coast tours followed. With the double albums Sun Cycle and Elk Jam (Feeding Tube, 2019) Elkhorn stepped firmly into a series of collaborative efforts that redefined their ever-changing sound. Recording at Black Dirt again, the duo fluidly expanded to include Willie Lane on third guitar and Ryan Jewell on drums and tabla. The following year they returned with The Storm Sessions (Beyond Beyond is Beyond, 2020) and The Acoustic Storm Sessions (Centripetal Force/Cardinal Fuzz, 2020), recorded at Gardner’s Harlem home studio with long-time friend, Turner Williams on shahi baaja and electric bouzouki. The band's truncated March of 2020 tour was documented on the Southern Star cassette (Warhen Records, 2021) and shows the band in full flight with a wide range of guests, including Mike Gangloff of the band Pelt. Later that year The Golden Lag tape (Blue Hole Recordings, 2021) came out, documenting the band's only livestream performance of the pandemic. Jesse and Drew performed from Jesse's home, while Turner joined via WhatsApp from Marseille, France. Elkhorn music unfolds at its own pace. It is music with a point of view and momentum. It begins with an intention to be sincere and fully expressive in the moment, and often results in musical journeys toward transcendence. The duo is multitudes. The duo is one.
-Bio from Elkhorn site
Are you originally from New York? What was your childhood like growing up? When did you first begin to fall in love with music, more specifically the bass? Was music relevant around your household growing up? Do you have any siblings?
I was born on the Upper West Side, so I’m a New Yorker by birth. But pretty early on my parents got divorced and my mom and I drifted out to the Bay Area. So there’s a strong Californian streak in me too. A lifelong devotion to Dylan and The Beatles was genetically passed on to me through my father. My mom was a folkie and played a bit of banjo. I have some wonderful siblings from my dad’s second marriage, but they’re all a bit younger, so I didn’t really have any musical mentors at an early age.
What would you and your friends do for fun growing up? Who were some of our earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your very first concert and when did you realize you wanted to spend your life making music?
By the time I was in high school, my mom and I had drifted back to the East coast and I was living the quintessential suburban existence in the Reagan era. In my mind it now feels like we were living a cross between The Breakfast Club, Repo Man and the Love & Rockets comics. At the time it felt mind-bogglingly boring. Drugs weren’t our thing, so we just hung out down by the river and listened to music. That’s when I met my bandmate from Elkhorn, Drew Gardner. He and I and a small group of friends were rabid fans of the Butthole Surfers and all the Factory bands from Manchester. We saw Sonic Youth at CBGB‘s just before the Daydream Nation album came out. City Gardens in Trenton was our local venue. Then the Sabbath, Young, and Hendrix started sneaking into our listening rotation. It was only a matter of time before we picked up guitars. I landed on the bass because that’s what was needed, but it was a good fit from the beginning. I’m not sure I ever thought about spending my life making music, but at this point some thirty years on, I can’t imagine my life having any meaning without it.
Prior to Elkhorn you participated in groups such as Mayfirst. Tell me about this outfit and how you initially met your bandmates Alex Saville, Amy Jacob and Drew Gardner. The band recorded one album on cassette in ‘88. What was the overall approach to the band’s music and what was your experience of recording those songs?
Mayfirst was the band that came out of everything I describe above. Yes, the name was overtly political. Of course the seed of Elkhorn was planted in that soil, but Drew and I remain really close with Alex and Amy, who went on to play a ton of great music and are actually married now. You could definitely say that band had a big impact on our lives! There were two cassettes and a few gigs on the Lower East Side, plus an aborted record deal with a European label. We did “I Don’t Live Today” off the first Experience album and a long jammer about the bombing of Cambodia. We recorded at Amy’s dad’s warehouse in an industrial park in New Jersey. Need I say more?
Many years later you and Drew went on to start Elkhorn together. What was the overall vision for the group’s unique sound and approach to making music? You guys released your debut in 2016 on BBIBR. What did you guys ultimately want to achieve and express with this release and would you mind giving some back story to some of the songs that are featured on the album?
So from the middle of college, we fast forward through a whole bunch of different bands. I go down a deep prog and metal hole and Drew heads to San Francisco to immerse himself into the free jazz/improv scene there in the 90s. But as we moved around, we always stayed in touch and played music whenever we could. Whoever else we were playing with, it was always instrumental free-form jamming. The pulse of electric Miles and German psych ran through our veins. We did a cover of “Vuelto Abajo” off the second Lifetime album. For a while we rehearsed at a studio in New York with a Rhodes in it and Gardner really knew how to play that thing! At this point something happens that changes the trajectory of the music. My interest in Pre-War Blues and Country takes a hard turn into Guitar Soli, which leads me down a deep rabbit hole of acoustic music and many years of sitting on the couch trying to teach myself how to fingerpick.
In high school my daughter asked me to take her to buy a bass she found on eBay, and the seller also had a cheap 12-string. When that came home it was a moment on the journey. One time Drew came over to my house for a New Year’s Eve party and we both picked up guitars and it felt like pieces falling into place. There were so many great people connecting around the music scene in the early aughts. I was shooting video of all the great music I was seeing and building relationships through that. My friend Glenn Jones sold me my first Guild and the music really started to take shape. Drew had always played guitar, but he was starting to really spend a lot of time on the fretboard. Material started forming. But what you have to understand is that those first two albums were recorded in the reverse order that they were released.
That following year you guys released your follow up “The Black River”. What did you guys want to explore on this album that differs from the previous album? How did the deal with Debacle Records come about and I understand you guys worked with No-Neck Blues Band’s Jason Meagher on this project. What was that experience like?
I approached Jason Meagher after a Gunn show in Philly and he was the sweetest guy. Black Dirt was the house studio for everyone I was listening to and it was a dream to record there. We drove up to Jason’s spread in a remote part of New York state and had an incredible experience recording The Black River. All those songs had been written over the previous years and we’d played them out a bunch. Jason’s knowledge of recording was matched by an incredible understanding of the creative process. We had never had an outside voice meld with the music that way before and it was liberating. That album kind of defines the essential sound of the project, even after all the permutations we’ve put it through. When Debacle picked The Black River up, I was ecstatic. I will forever be in debt to Sam for believing in us and standing behind the music. While we were waiting for the Debacle pressing to happen, the wonderful folks at Beyond Beyond is Beyond approached us about putting out a cassette. They had just done Bodhi Cheetah’s Choice with Prana Crafter and we were stoked to work with them. Drew had experience recording music and was starting to build out his home studio. We sat down and wrote those tunes practically as we recorded them. They go from composed set-pieces like Seven Arrows to totally loose and open-ended burners like Seed. Earthbound is a tribute to a massive influence of the time: the band Earthless. That whole album feels incredibly raw and exposed to me, but I will say that a lot of folks seemed to dig it. The tape was gone in the blink of an eye and so was the LP reissue that came out on Debacle a few years later.
The band has released a number of records such as “Lionfish”, “Elk Jam”, “Sun Cycle” and many others over the years. What is most important to you guys when setting out to write and record a new record? Having been friends and bandmates for over thirty years, what is the energy, brotherhood and chemistry between you guys like after all these years?
Writing for us, as such, is sort of about setting a tone. It usually starts with a riff. We work out a mode and a rhythmic structure and try to create a variety of moods with those elements. Some of the pieces are more composed like on much of the Sun Cycle LP, others are completely improvised like Elk Jam (hence the title, which is also a nod to the great Moby Grape). Then there are combinations of these elements like on Lionfish, where we improvise our way to a precomposed riff and then improvise on out of it. A lot of this takes place because we’ve been playing together for a long time and know each other’s musical language so well. A lot of it also has to do with a shared appreciation for musical forms like traditional Indian ragas and the open improvisatory aspect of the Grateful Dead. It does sometimes still strike me as pretty amazing that we’re on the same page musically so much of the time. There’s always a push and pull between the driving psych of Distances and the woody thrum of The Acoustic Storm Sessions, but we’ve found that if we are patient good things usually come. The push and pull is sort of what it’s all about after all.
What have you guys got going on for this Spring/Summer? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
We’ll be on tour the first week of May as we take it on the road to play the Milwaukee Psych Fest. Absolutely incredible line-up this year! And we will have Ian McColm with us on these dates playing drums, which has been a dream of ours for a while. We’ve always been big collaborators, but the trio configuration feels like something totally new and incredibly solid. Ian is so tuned in to the music and it’s always a blast to play with him. Drew and I are also backing Jeffrey Alexander in The Heavy Lidders on a bunch of these dates with Scott Verrastro on drums. That band is the ultimate balance between heavy rock swing and out-there space music and is also a hell of a lot of fun to jam with. It should be a good run and we’d love to see everyone out there.
