Artist Spotlight: Elk Moon
We dive deep with Elk Moon to talk about writing from the soul, staying grounded and keeping the music real.
Artist On The Rise: Can you tell us about your musical journey and how you first got into creating music?
Elk Moon: I grew up in a musical family, but I didn’t really take it seriously until I joined choir in high school. All my friends were either in choir or orchestra my freshmen year and I wasn’t in either one. I felt really left out so the following year I joined both and luckily our choir teacher became an amazing musical mentor to me. Also, around that time it seemed like everyone I knew went out and got an acoustic guitar. It was kind of like a fad or something at the time, but I was not great at athletics and I found it difficult to focus on academia so I decided to make guitar my thing. Around 5 years later I was about to get my AA from a Junior college. I wanted to explore the world and get out of California where I was raised. I heard about a school in Boston called Berklee College of Music. I scheduled auditions at 3 or 4 different schools and didn’t bother going to any of the other ones except for Berklee because I was so determined to get in. The next year I was going to Berklee and that’s where I met Drew.
Artist On The Rise: What are your main musical influences and how have they shaped your sound?
Elk Moon: When I was growing up and going to college it was anything with technically difficult guitar. Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Paul Gilbert, Metallica ect. Within the last few years though I have become increasingly influenced by classical music. I like the fact that you can turn on a classical radio station and pretty much every musician you hear on that station will at least have an element of virtuosity. And classical music seems to have, at least for the time being, escaped the insidious nature of click bait music on instagram. On our recent single, Back In Hollywood though my guitar parts are heavily influenced by Stevie Ray Vaughan. He was one of my biggest influences when I first started going to college. It’s a style that I don’t play too much in this project because we are more of a hard rock band, but it was really fun to let some of my more bluesy elements come out in this last song and do my best to pay Stevie homage.
Artist On The Rise: Describe your songwriting process. Where do you find inspiration for your lyrics and melodies?
Elk Moon: My songwriting process is different for each song and depending on if it is a co-write with Drew or something I am doing on my own. For my best songs though, the lyrics usually come first because if I am inspired to write some lyrics that means that I am thinking about something specific that I want to communicate. Once I can contextualize that thought or feeling into words it is easier to come up with music that will fit the vibe of what I am trying to say. So I guess for a lot of my songs you could say that the lyrics are the foundation. For Back In Hollywood it was different because Drew had already written the song, but it didn’t have guitar so I had a lot of space to play around with ideas.
Artist On The Rise: How do you feel your music connects with your audience and what do you hope listeners take away from your songs?
Elk Moon: I think that we try to write music that has different layers. You should be able to just rock out to the riffs and if that’s all you want to do then our music will work for that. But there are also deeper elements to explore in most of our songs for the listeners who want that type of thing. I think a lot of music is aimed at helping people escape from reality for a little while and our music is the exact opposite. Personally I want to write music that inspires and empowers people to face reality head on.
Artist On The Rise: What has been the most challenging aspect of being a music artist and how have you overcome it?
Elk Moon: The most challenging aspect for me has been the sheer amount of time required for artists to spend on things like social media these days. In some ways technology has liberated artists because we can do everything ourselves. It is a double edged sword though because we are now EXPECTED to do everything ourselves. I put it like this recently: If you want to be a musician you should ask yourself, do I know how to mine for cobalt? Because you are going to need to do that in order to extract the raw materials required to build the computer that you will then need to use to develop video editing software so that you can make content to post on instagram. I am being facetious of course (kind of), but this is how it feels sometimes. As far as overcoming it, I think we are continuing to learn how to find a balance.You need a social media presence, that much can’t be denied. But at the end of the day we are musicians first and foremost. It is a process figuring out where the line is between those things.
Artist On The Rise: Looking back at your career so far, what is one accomplishment or experience you are most proud of?
Elk Moon: When I was starting out I never wanted to touch a recording program. In fact, when Drew and I moved in together my freshmen year at Berkelee, I saw him making recordings in Garage Band on his computer and I was like, “Thats never going to be me!” I was intimidated by the recording process, and understandably so. I just wanted to plug in my guitar and play. Years later I am the sole engineer and producer for all of our music so far. I never would have guessed that would be the case back in the day.
Artist On The Rise: What are your future goals and aspirations for your music? Are there any specific projects or collaborations you're excited about?
Elk Moon: We will continue to write and release music of course. That is our main thing. But in a larger sense I have also become increasingly intrigued by and passionate about the prospect of how to make changes in the music industry. It is incredibly difficult to be a musician right now for reasons previously mentioned. I think this boils down to the landscape and environment that we are functioning in as artists. The infrastructure is not there to support artists who have an obsessive focus for their craft like it was in the past. Imagine someone telling Jimi Hendrix that he needed to put his guitar down and spend more time promoting himself on his iPhone. I think that the success of podcasts has shown that people would actually like material with more substance than just click bait. I think something like the podcasting revolution could happen in the music industry as well where it gives power to the artists to focus on what is important to them, namely making art. It will likely take people working together to make something like that happen though and that is a long term thing that I feel very passionately about exploring.
Artist On The Rise: If you could give one piece of advice to aspiring musicians starting out today, what would it be?
Elk Moon: It’s hard to give advice to someone without knowing their situation, but the advice I wish I had gotten when I was starting is to not be afraid of failing. Everyone who has gotten really good at something has failed a lot at it. Just make sure you are learning and above all else make sure you are out there doing what you love.
Artist On The Rise: Is there anything else you'd like to share about your music, your creative process, or your journey that we haven't covered?
Elk Moon: We Just want to express how grateful we are for all the support that we have received so far in getting this project off the ground. It has not been easy, but it has been rewarding because we are making the music that we believe in.
