Elephant Revival's Bonnie Paine

Today's show features an exclusive interview with Elephant Revival's Bonnie Paine, who just released her debut solo record, Unseen. 

She joins the show today to talk about how the record came together, her path to headlining Red Rocks, and a little known band out of Oklahoma called The Rat Nurses. 

You can read the full story at cariboucurrent.com, or in our May issue, on news racks all over Nederland, Boulder and the Peak to Peak today.

Bonnie will be at Fox Theatre in Boulder on Saturday, May 16.

Also

• Skate culture is alive and well in Nederland at Nathan Lazarus Skatepark
• American Football drummer Steve Lamos at CU
• MainStage Brewing brings the house down with Bluegrass
• Rebuilding from Colorado filmmaker Max Walker-Silverman resonates with wildfire threatened communities on the Front Range
• Boulder Arts Blueprint sets stage for the next 10 years of art in Boulder 

The song at the end of the show is Bonnie Paine's "Unseen", the title track off her new record. Listen to it here.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Alright, happy Friday everyone. We are back with another issue of Caribou Current. If you haven't been tuned in, Fridays will be the day you can expect to hear my voice from now on. And Music of the Mountains with Jamie Lammers will now be coming out every single Monday. So sit tight. I'm Tyler Hickman. Welcome to the Mountaineer Podcast. Before we dive in, we have a quick word from the Netherland Farmers Market. The new season is just around the corner. This year's market will run from May 10th through October 18th. Along with all your favorite vendors, we're planning a few special fundraising events throughout the season. This year is extra meaningful for the Ned Farmers Market, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary. That's 10 amazing years of bringing people together, supporting locals, and celebrating everything that makes our community so special. The celebration will last all season long. To kick things off, the opening day theme is Gold Day for the market's golden birthday. They're turning 10 on May 10th. Come out, wear your best gold, bring your friends and family, and help start the season strong. There's nothing quite like that first weekend back. Seeing returning vendors, reconnecting with the vibrant community, and of course, enjoying access to fresh local produce every single weekend. We can't wait to see you there. Today's main segment is an exclusive with Ned Royalty. Elephant Revival's Bonnie Payne, who just released her very first solo record, joined us in studio to talk about the Bongos being in the spotlight and a little known band called The Rat Nurses. Per usual, I'm here with Caribou Current Managing Editor, Jesse Gray, to flip through the pages of our May issue. Welcome back, Jesse. Glad to be here. Yeah, yeah, it's uh good to be in the studio again. We have another issue behind us, and it is packed this month with a gnarly cover shot by yours truly. I'm calling it our Thrasher edition since we have a Ned Skate story on the cover, uh, but it's also filled with great stories from the peak to peak down into Boulder, really all over. Do you want to give us a quick rundown of what's inside this month?

SPEAKER_03 2:51

Yeah, I mean, you said it. This thing is so packed. I don't have the time here to rundown everything that's in this issue. You're just gonna have to pick it up and see for yourself. As Tyler just said, our cover story on Netherland skate culture by Tyler himself. It's a fantastic piece of narrative journalism. You'll meet the old heads from the skate scene as well as the young bucks who are keeping the tradition alive at Nathan Lazarus Skate Park in Netherland. Uh, in the music section, we've got a story I'm quite excited about. Uh, my interview with American football drummer Steve Lamos, a legendary Midwest emo band whose drummer happens to be a CU professor in the English department. Steve is collaborating with a CU student named Max Adams, where they're reimagining American football's catalog with the CU percussion ensemble. But there's also a new American football record coming out and a new tour that's launching in Denver.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

The record is out May 1st. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

Yeah, it's good too. Um, featuring guest spots from folks like Brendan Yates of Turnstyle. Lots to listen to there. It's really good stuff. We've also got a great film story from Michael J. Casey about a Telluride-based filmmaker named Max Walker Silverman, who has a film out called Rebuilding, starring Josh O'Connor, that's about a Colorado community rebuilding after a wildfire. Lots there for folks around here to relate to, um, given our experience with wildfire here on the front range. We've also got a story on mainstage brewing, which just expanded from their original Lyons location last year to include a new tap room and gun barrel. The story focuses on their bluegrass showcase, which has been a big driver for local talent here on the front range. And then we've also got a nice news story on the Boulder Arts blueprint from Tony Tresca. This is a 10-year plan from the city that was just approved. Whose goal is to integrate the arts into the city's economic strategy. Obviously, that becomes a lot more important with the arrival of Sundance next year. So there's there's lots to engage with in this issue, you know, whether it's news, film, music, something else. You're good, you're gonna find something good to read this time around for sure.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

We also have tons of concerts coming throughout the month of May. What is one that our readers cannot miss this month?

SPEAKER_03 5:08

I think you gotta go see Brancho at the Fox Theater on May 14th. This is a band for from my stomping grounds in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a sort of like slack rock, indie, guitar forward, poppy, song-driven outfit. And they're celebrating 10 years of their seminal album, Double Vanity. So they'll be playing that from back to front with some other classics mixed in as well. That's my recommendation.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Sweet. Check it out. On the event side this month. I'm kind of loving the Idaho Springs borough races. It looks like an absolute blast. Uh, it's gonna be in town Sunday, May 24th. Hit the town, watch elite runners run up and down a mountain with a donkey in tow. It sounds like a great time. You also get to hang out in Idaho Springs, cute little town right off I-70, would be a great time to check out the new mighty Argo gondola. I was there last week for the grand opening, opens to the public on May 9th, but it was a lot cooler than I thought. You'd take this shiny new gondola up to the top of the mountain for these beautiful panoramic views. And if you're a mountain biker, there's tons of trails there that you can ride. So check it out, spend a day in Idaho Springs and watch people race donkeys. And with that, we are gonna get into Jesse's interview with Bonnie Payne, who is also in this month's edition. She was the very first person to be an in-studio guest here in our Boulder studio. So we were super excited about it. We had a blast. Here they are.

SPEAKER_03 6:43

Bonnie, thank you so much for joining us today. We're so glad to have you in the studio. So the last time we spoke was the summer of 2023 for Boulder Weekly, which was amazingly three years ago. It doesn't feel right. At that time, Elephant Revival was just about to return to Planet Bluegrass. It was about a year after your like reunion show there. So what have these last few years been like for you? Can you kind of catch me up?

SPEAKER_02 7:09

It's been a journey. Lots of exploring different uh musical approaches, which has been fun and interesting. And you know, the healthy balance of challenge and and comfort is always important to feel alive and everything. So yeah, it's been a lot of that. Um just exploring different music, and I got to record this solo record, so that's been a lot of my focus the last couple and a half years.

SPEAKER_03 7:35

Well, that's definitely what we want to talk to you about. You're back with your first solo record unseen, which is a beautiful collection of songs that I think any fan of Elephant Revival should be stoked about. And can you tell us a little bit about how this project began to germinate and come together for you?

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Yeah, I mean, it's been a long time coming. The elephant has encouraged me for years to do it because I write a lot of songs and you know, and a lot of those, most of them are in Elephant Revival. It's nice. They have a lot of these have a little bit of a different tonality, so a little more ethereal building into rocking kind of a vibe. And so they felt like they had a nice home in the solo project. And I was uh Gregory Allen Isaacov is a good old friend of mine, and he we were talking because he's heard me. He said, play me a song, and so I played him a song I was working on. He's like, Let's go record it right now, and so I was like, okay, might as well just start, and that kind of like cracked the seal to get over the feeling of like it has to be this like perfect moment when you begin. I mean, it was pretty perfect and beautiful. I love his studio that that got me kind of going with recording. So we went into Gregory's studio and tracked the song, and then he just layered like voice after voice and um keys and pianos and synthesizers and god noises, and we had a really fun time with it. And then we took that song to Ferncliff Studio, um, which is a studio that my husband had designed out in Ferncliffe, Colorado. And we finished it there with uh Daniel Sproud helped co-produce, and then he helped with four more songs. That place felt like a stone cave with like a candlelit kind of like old world vibe in there. And then T Vone Burnett, who I had been in touch with for a while, recording the rest of the record with him, five more songs, which was super fun and a huge honor. Yeah, T Vone Burnett had sent Elephant uh New York Times article years ago. Maybe we were interested in having him produce an elephant album, and he said, we'll write a song about this article. And I'm like, I typically don't like, I don't want songs to be too contrived. It's hard for me to write about something specific that somebody's like, write a song about this. So it took me a many, many years to write a song about this article that was so interesting about basically how information is gonna be, you know, widely available to everybody. And it's gonna be an amazing and beautiful thing, but it's gonna be really hard to discern the truth of what's going on. And media is gonna become bought by the largest corporations and just gonna become another advertisement platform, and like how you know, being a musician will become something that you're just a marketing specialist will become the the top musicians and all these things that we're seeing signs up today. And it was a really interesting article, and I was certainly inspired by it. So I wrote the song called Phantoms in the Station over the course of the next 10 years, and then I saw T-Bone at Telluride, and we were talking and having a good time, and I said, you know, I did write a song about that. Sorry, it took me so long. He said, We'll send it. And so I recorded it, just a little voice memo in a cabin and sent it to him. He said, This is great, let's do this. Uh, when can you come out and record? And uh super fun. And then I got to have a bunch of my Colorado musicians fly out with me, and Britney Haas also out in Nashville copped on the fiddle, who's I just love her playing.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

So did that feel like a full circle moment for you?

SPEAKER_02 11:09

Full circle, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:10

I'd say that it felt like affirming of like, yeah, we are doing this this solo record thing with a lot of my favorite musicians and does it feel more vulnerable to release an album under your own name as opposed to like as part of a collective? Does it feel like you're putting yourself out there in a different way?

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Absolutely. And that's probably why it's taken me 20 years. Yeah, for sure. You're just you are the the name, but I still like to have a lot of creative freedom. I started playing music with my sisters, which was very comfortable. And um I'm like the baby in the family too. So I was a very shy person when I first started with Elephant. Like like I remember when we would do interviews, like Bridget, I would look at her for every question and she would answer for me. And you know, like it was very like I got to ease into the having people put so much attention on you, which that part is not my favorite, honestly, but the music part is so fun.

SPEAKER_03 12:15

Because I imagine on the flip side that there's something quite meaningful about having your name on the record and having your vision come to life in this way. Does does it feel gratifying in a different way than working collectively?

SPEAKER_02 12:30

Yeah, I think so. It it feels yeah, liberating to be able to have a vision and know that you can articulate it, you know, to whatever extent and then see that come to life in ways that I hear things readmittedly in my mind, and then to be able to hear it out loud like that is super very satisfying.

SPEAKER_03 12:50

The title, unseen, feels a bit ironic since you're you're stepping into the spotlight in a in a new way. Can can you sort of talk about like why you landed on that title and what it means for you?

SPEAKER_02 13:00

Yeah. The title came from a song that I recorded with the Father Time Drumline. I was just inspired by like the most profound things that end up making our life in the long run when we look back, our things that are mostly on tangible and not seeable are like very subtle things in our life that end up making up you know all of the most important things. And so that was really inspiring to me. It felt like these songs had been percolating for so long and kind of in the dark, and then they were gonna be revealed. And so it felt like that seemed like a good title for the album.

SPEAKER_03 13:41

I actually wanted to talk about your path to music being through the drums, and which I think maybe some people might not expect right away. Can you tell us a little more about those early days, like when you first kind of found your path?

SPEAKER_02 13:53

I would say it started with like singing with my mom or listening to her sing more so and like singing, I would find like reverberous spots, you know, to sing in since I was really little. When I was five, we moved to town and across the street from who had become my oldest stepsister. And there was like a a tree that you could climb up. My brother climbed up to where her window was where she was playing the drums and was like, you know, this guy Randy Crouch needs a new drummer, who was an old friend of my dad's. And so she ended up becoming his drummer, and we became friends that way. And then she ended up moving into our yard in a bus with her boyfriend who was the bass player for his band, and they would leave all their instruments set up for rehearsal, and me and my sisters, other sisters would go and play on all the instruments, and then we became part of their show at times. They call us the rat nurses because we took care of baby rats that we found.

SPEAKER_03 14:52

I'm so glad you told us that.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

Oh, it was not like a thing that we're particularly proud of, but um, we ended up playing shows together as the rat nurses, but also known as Randy Crouch's Flying Horse Opera Band. Also a great title. I remember being like 12 for our first show that was on the Marquee. There's a Dream Theater in Talloqua, Oklahoma, and it said Randy Crouch Live with the Rat Nurses, and my dad had made these t-shirts with these three girls or rats dressed in nurse, rat nurses outfits, all playing guitar. I played electric guitar back then. And uh it was we were just mortified, like because as a 12-year-old, that's but now everybody wears them. I was like, you know, I should sell them at the show, maybe.

SPEAKER_03 15:42

Yeah, you said you were you were searching for for names for this project. I mean, there's some great options right here. So let's let's go back to the new record a little bit. Obviously, the songs in this collection are all quite different, but is there a through line connecting them in your mind? Like, is are there any overarching themes you're exploring on this record, any any glue that in your mind holds them together?

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Yeah, I mean it it it is pretty all over the place in some ways. And I was wondering if they're all too different. But once I found the, I feel like I found a cool order for them to go into where it feels kind of like a journey, where it layers like a mysterious landscape of sounds almost like a storm is brewing to introduce it and then it eases into more groove. I would say the unseen, the title, partly why I chose that title also again, is that there is a recurring theme of like this thing that we're all a part of and you know, the the most magnificent, unseeable forces that move our bodies around and like make us feel the feelings and do the things and make the wind blow. And you know, I just it was like a homage to whatever you want to call that beautiful thing that we're all inextricable from.

SPEAKER_03 16:56

Can you point us toward a song on the record that you think really encapsulates what you're up to here? Like if you you could only share one song with someone to get a sense of unseen, what would it be and why?

SPEAKER_02 17:09

Vineland is the first song that's on there. That one it just moves through a lot of different sonic tapestries, so it kind of encapsulates the sound in that, I would say. And it has like a delicateness and then a strength within it. And then I would say lighthouse would be the other one. It starts very rhythmic, which is my like first instrument is percussion, and so that feels like very much a part of who I am, and then but I actually tracked it on cello, but then I layered a whole bunch of like washboard drums and like percussive textures. So I'd say instrumentally, that one like encapsulates the most of like of what I have to offer, but then it it picks up in energy in a fun way and it goes into the more cello. I write a lot on cello, so it gets this more symphonic vibe, and and then I had rising appalaches sing harmonies on it, so it has that feeling of like kind of almost camaraderie that feels nice.

SPEAKER_03 18:04

That was the first song that really stuck out to me on my first listen through. And I I think the those additional vocals especially bring just such an expansive palette to that part of the record, and it's just really gorgeous.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

Thank you. It's fun to record. I brought that in with the T-Bone Burnett sessions, and there were a bit a lot of them had not even heard that song, and it's it's pretty old, like the especially the orchestral part. Like I was so happy to see what that turned into. Like with Britney Haas on the fiddle, like for her to have just like picked that up and kind of make it just bloom into the way that she did. I thought it was so fun to watch. This the room was very, like, very excited. It was so sweet to be with all those people. And it's fun to like hear the songs new through other people too, and get their feedback on it and their enthusiasm.

SPEAKER_03 18:55

Were there times where you found yourself listening to something that was quite different from what you had in your head when it was just your song?

SPEAKER_02 19:02

Yeah, for sure. Like um, there's an instrumental called Turning Tide. To me, like I have I hear weird time signatures sometimes that seem very normal to me. And then once I played it for the band, they're like, I, you know, this usually happens. Or like you're adding a beat here, you're doing seven time here, but why this one's in five, four. I'm like, I have no idea. I was like trying not to think too much in those terms. But there's this part where it does go in this weird time, and then it opens up and like to feel the relief of the band, they were like, the Led Zeppelin, they were calling it the Led Zeppelin jam. It was fun to hear it that way. And I could feel it when it did finally open up to the Led Zeppelin jam, like the drummer was just like smiling so big and like hitting the drums so hard, and like bass players like got this stink face, you know, like super excited. And I was like, Oh, that's fun to think of it like that. It's supposed to be a song of like um of an uprising, and it really it felt like that because that is the moment of the uprising of these people in the lower deck of the ship are overthrowing. I've been writing this song story for most of my life, and that's the scene. It's a really intense scene, this instrumental. And I felt like we really captured that, but in like a much more robust way than I had anticipated. So that was really fun.

SPEAKER_03 20:14

I imagine you've seen a lot of changes in the years since here in Colorado. I imagine a lot is different now compared to 2004. And can you speak to that a little bit, maybe specifically in regard to the music scene here? What has changed or maybe not changed in in the decades since?

SPEAKER_02 20:32

Well, I would say one of the things that was so beautiful and that I was so excited about when I first came here was the live music and the opportunity to play not on stage, also, so that you could have that developing time and just like that freedom of making music together. There were so many jams. If there was a gathering, there was bound to be people playing music together, which I just love that. And I I wish for that for more people because I don't know that I would have ever developed the way that I did on an instrument if I didn't have off of the stage opportunities. You know, and I see kids, you know, I like go to recitals and stuff like that, and you're like, wow, this is a different tone whenever you're playing music and you're performing right off the bat, versus getting to have those intimate moments where you're like sitting around the fire and passing a guitar around. Like I like to play past the guitar because it makes everybody kind of come out of their shell and you're not allowed to pass it without even you have to at least play like one note or two notes or something, and it like helps it's just fun to hear that part of people, even if they've never played a guitar before. Like, I'd rather do that than chit-chat all day. Like, I hope that there is four more forms of that that come back for for everybody's sake, because I just think it feels so meaningful and it's like a fun opportunity to you can try out a different instrument and get over the fear of like rather than having to like play it alone your whole life and then you're on stage, you know, like or your rehearsal with the idea of being on stage, like was a beautiful thing that I loved about her when I came here.

SPEAKER_03 22:08

So when you look back on those early days of making music when you were first kind of cutting your teeth with the band and you compare it to where you are now, what goes through your mind when you f when you think about that journey? Like, did you ever imagine you'd be in this position?

SPEAKER_02 22:22

Well, I remember when I was, I think, 14 or something. My mom, for my birthday, got me an astrological reading from she like sent in the time that I was born, and it was like Will most likely be or you know, very visual or or visually artistic, and will most likely be a singer. And I was like, mom, I'm like, no way am I singing in front of people. Like this thing is so off. Like, you know, um, it was really like pretty spot on in every other way. And I was like, this is like because I remember being really excited about reading it and then being like, what? Like, yeah, right. Um, because that just seemed like impossible. I would, I was so shy that I would like when you had to say here in class, I would like literally puke in my mouth to have to say here. I hate it so much. Um, so I would have never dreamed that I would be so comfortable with singing now and got have gotten to sing for so many folks. And I feel pretty fearless when music is happening now. The in-between songs is still like can be awkward, but um music is like something that it instantly connects us. And so you just like it takes all the for me anyways, that's been a really lovely part of it. So yeah, and then to play like with my sisters, I we played electric guitar at first, and then that felt too in the front, and they the guy, Randy Crouch, would just be like solo out of nowhere, and I it just scared the crap out of me. And so I like I'm not doing that anymore. So I switched to congos and bongos, and then I would have this whole like fortress I could hide behind, and just you know, I didn't have to know the chords, they weren't, you know, they weren't gonna give me a guitar solo, which is if they did give me a solo, it was just percussion, I didn't have to know the right notes. And then my sisters and I joined started a band with James Townsend in uh called My Tea Kind. I started singing in that band with James and writing songs, and um, he's the one who taught me how to play musical song and got me my first musical saw, which was so fun. It was a very eclectic band. He had learned from Neutral Milk Hotel and was pretty inspired by that band. So there were some tones of that and like um modest mouse. So it was very like a rock band. And then I met some members of Elephant Revival, Bridget and Dango and Daniel, and I started playing with them, and then we would open up for the band with my sisters, and um, so yeah, it was a it was like a nice journey into that, and then to be able to play red rocks, you know, headline red rocks a few times was super a huge honor.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

Anything you want to say before we uh wrap up here?

SPEAKER_02 25:05

The album will be out on May 8th, which is gonna be fun. And then there's the show at the Fox Theater on May 16th, and I'm really excited for the musicians that are the surprise guest there. And Hermana is opening in their really cool duo, sing in Portuguese and Spanish, and um, they're really good friends of mine. We're part of a band called Leyline, so I'm excited for that. And David Brown's gonna play guitar from Rising Appalachia. A lot of surprises. I just won't say any more than that, but a lot of fun. Folks will be there.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

Well, we're looking forward to it. Uh Bonnie, thank you so much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_02 25:42

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

I felt it over. This red and white up. Let's get the cover.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

Once again, huge shout out to Bonnie for coming into the studio. Uh, it was so much fun to be in here with a guest, me running the audio, watching Jesse do his thing, read the story, check out the show. She'll be at The Fox on Saturday, May 7th with Hermana. If you love Elephant Revival, go pay your respects to one of the fantastic artists behind the band. That is all for today. If you liked today's episode, please, please share it around and go pick up a copy of Caribou Current. It's free, and you can find them all over the Peak to Peak and in Boulder in coffee shops, storefronts, and at newsstands. As always, make sure to like and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want a copy of Caribou Current delivered to you each month, you can subscribe to The Mountaineer in print. The first issue of every month will have a copy right inside. Once again, this is the Mountaineer Podcast. I'm Tyler Hickman. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next Friday.